It seems that one of the big things in the last few years are websites and programs about tracing your family tree. These online services allow you to enter your name and search records, such as birth and marriage certificates, and trace your family tree.
Well, there is a website (http://phdtree.org/) that take the family tree idea and puts a new edge on it. It allows scientists to trace their supervisor tree.
During your PhD, postdoc and undergraduate you will have a supervisor (essentially just your boss) who will help and advise you. Almost all scientists will have a supervisor during their academic studies, meaning that your supervisor also had a supervisor. And they had a supervisor and so on, all the way back hundreds of years. Many of the great greek philosophers were supervised/trained by other philosophers. So there is obviously an appeal to find out your supervisor family tree. Does your tree contain any famous scientists?
So I looked up my supervisor and found my academic genealogy and the results are pretty cool! A few generations back is Ernest Rutherford, who is famous for his revolutionary work in nuclear and particle physics. For example, he discovered and named the proton, one of the 3 particles that makes up an atom.
Go back a lot more layers and you reach Isaac Newton, the man famed for his work on understanding Gravity. A few levels above him is Galileo, the famous mathematician, physicists and astronomer. I could keep going back further, but the tree is so good that it's taking me some time to check every branch.
Finding out that these incredible people have passed down their knowledge and experiences through to me through a long list of supervisors gives me a very good feeling.
So if you are a scientist, go check out the website. If not, then why not pick a famous scientist and check their supervisor tree to see what other scientists are in their tree.
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