Show HN: Trace the history of academia (gist.github.com)

6 points by vedantk ↗ HN
Wikipedia often lists the doctoral advisors of famous scientists. I wanted to be able to pick a scientist and recursively find their mentors. This information has no practical value, but I thought it was interesting. John McCarthy's mentor history is especially awesome;

John McCarthy (computer scientist) >> Solomon Lefschetz ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Carl Friedrich Gauss ... >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Jakob Thomasius ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Siméon Denis Poisson >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Joseph Louis Lagrange >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Leonhard Euler >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Johann Bernoulli >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Pierre-Simon Laplace >> >> >> >> >> >> Joseph Fourier

2 comments

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Wikipedia often lists the doctoral advisors of famous scientists. I wanted to be able to pick a scientist and recursively find their mentors. This information has no practical value, but I thought it was interesting. John McCarthy's mentor history is especially awesome;

John McCarthy (computer scientist) >> Solomon Lefschetz ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Carl Friedrich Gauss ... >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Jakob Thomasius ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Siméon Denis Poisson >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Joseph Louis Lagrange >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Leonhard Euler >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Johann Bernoulli >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Pierre-Simon Laplace >> >> >> >> >> >> Joseph Fourier

Interesting! You should change the user-agent, though...