Academic Family Tree
Four Centuries of My Academic Lineage
Overview
There are now big genealogy projects like the Astronomy Genealogy Project and the Mathematics Genealogy Project. You can imagine my disappointment when I checked both of these databases for my advisor and either couldn’t find him or couldn’t find his advisor! An academic genealogy with one link wouldn’t do
Many unexpected surprises have come out as I’ve dug up my academic family tree. A surprising and slightly disappointing discovery was the many (near) misses with academic celebrity. Everyone would like to have a Newton or Kepler in their family tree but alas there are no such celebrities to be found here. There is, however, something a bit more gratifying. There is a nearly uninterrupted line going back a milennium. For this reason this genealogy does not just tell the story of how I emerged doing science in the spirit of a long line of people, but it tells the story of science itself: where scientists came from, what their motivations were, and why do science at all.
There is significant freedom in how to tell such a story. I’ve made the choice to tell the story in chronological order. Those more interested in the present may want to skip to the end.
As of now, this project is incomplete. But as time goes by, I will be filling each section until the full tapestry is revealed.
Vienna - The Center of the World (1628 - ~1857)
The Jesuit College
Vienna was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian Empire after it.
Academic Family Tree
Johann Jakob Marinoni (1676-1755)
Father Joseph Franz (February 1704 - 12 April 1776)
He joined the Jesuits in 1719 and studied in Vienna where he was later made a professor. Franz established the Jesuit observatory there, which was the first permanent observatory in Vienna.
Nikolaus Poda von Neuhaus (October 4, 1723 – April 29, 1798)
Nikolaus Poda von Neuhaus was born in Vienna where he studied before . He is best well known for his work in the field of entomology, though he also became the director of the Graz Observatory. The link between Franz and Poda is circumstantial rather than direct. Poda studied at a variety of institutions, first philosophy in Klagenfurt and then Vienna for mathematics and astronomy in 1748-49. This time learning mathematics and astronomy overlaps with the time Franz was director in Vienna. Furthermore, Poda’s later work on the development of the observatory in Graz perfectly matches the trajectory set by Franz in Vienna. This makes Franz both the likely teacher of Poda of mathematics and astronomy, as well as the person who inspired the trajectory that he took in these fields.
Gabriel Gruber (4 May 1740 – 7 April 1805)
Jurij Vega (March 23, 1754 – September 26, 1802)
Ignaz Lindner (1777 - 1835)
Very little is known about Lindner. He studied at the Imperial-Royal Technical Military Academy before working at the University of Vienna. One likely reason that he is known of at all is due to his student, Andreas von Ettingshausen.
Andreas von Ettinghausen (25 November 1796 – 25 May 1878)
Von Ettinghausen was born in Heidelberg but went to Vienna for his studies. He succeeded Christian Doppler as director of the Vienna Physical Institute. He wrote a book on physics and a book on combinatorial analysis, a topic that would be important for one of his well known students, Gregor Mendel. Famously, he also introduced the notation (nk) for the binomial coefficient.
Shifting to Italy (1857 - ~1920)
The Decline of Austria
Academic Family Tree
Pietro Blaserna (February 29 1836 - February 26 1918)
Von Ettingshausen had many students, including Ernst Mach, Jozef Stefan, and Pietro Blaserna. Pietro Blaserna grew up in Gorizia, a modern day Italian province on the Slovenian border but, at the time, an Austro-Hungarian province. Blaserna studied physics and math under von Ettinshausen in Vienna but ultimately returned to Italy, taking up a position at the University of Rome.
Quirino Majorana (28 October 1871 - 31 July 1957)
The uncle of the more famed Ettore Majorana, he was born in Catania Sicily, and educated at the university of Rome under Pietro Blaserna, who he had a close relationship with. Majorana’s legacy is somewhat complex. He is primarily remembered for having first doubted Einstein’s special theory of relativity, before confirming it himself, as well as for measuring gravitational shielding which failed to be replicated. He tended to work alone, possibly exacerbating his academic isolation.
The Padovans (~1920 - 2000)
The Center of Astronomy in Italy
The University of Padua occupies a special place in world history and an even more special place in the history of Astronomy. The fifth oldest univeresity in the world (second in Italy to the University of Bologna). In fact, the founding legend is quite close to that of Cambridge. It is said that in 1222 the University was bounded by a group of students who left the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom.
The University of Padua boasts among its most famous faculty Galileo Galilei and Tullio Levi-Civita. Galileo was the chair professor in mathematics from 1592-1610. It was during this time that he wrote Sidereus Nuncius, his treatise announcing the discovery of the mountains on the moon, and Jupiter’s moons. It is rumored that he conducted many of his observations from the top of the Specola (in fact, the observatory wasn’t built until much after this). Levi-Civita will be less well known to students outside of mathematical physics. When asked about Italy, Albert Einstein said his favorite things were “spaghetti and Lev-Civita.”
The Specula was long used as the primary astronomical observatory in Padova until the 1930’s. It was then that a modern facility was set up in the nearby town of Asiago. This was, for a time, the largest telescope in Europe.
Academic Family Tree
Bruno Rossi (13 April 1905 – 21 November 1993)
[Bruno Rossi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Rossi) is perhaps the most well known of the Padovans in my academic family tree due to the fact that he was a member of the Manhattan project. Born in Venice, Rossi attended the University of Padua for his undergraduate degree, followed by his postgraduate studies at the University of Bologna in 1927. He was advised by Quirino Majorana, Uncle to the more well known Ettore Majorana.
Rossi returned to Padua in 1932 as a professor, where he oversaw the construction of the new Physics Institute. He remained there as director until 1938 when, due to the racial laws put forward by government of Mussolini, Rossi was dismissed from his professorship. He left Italy, first for Manchester, and later the US.
In 1946 with the end of the war, Rossi moved to MIT, where he would remain the rest of his life.
Leonida Rosino (19 September 1915 - 31 July 1997)
Leonida Rosino was born in Treviso, Italy. He finished his postgraduate studies at the University of Padua in 1938. The same year that his advisor, Bruno Rossi, would leave. He spent the next 15 years in the University of Bologna before return to Padua.
Francesco Bertola (20 May 1937 - )
Francesco Bertola was born in Padova, completed his studies in Padova, and became a professor at Padova where he remained his entire career apart from a two year stint at the University of Lecce (1972-74).
His early work, similar to Rosino, focused on supernovae. But he soon shifted to galaxies, studying their mass and dynamics. One of his key contributions was Bertola & Capaccioli 1975 where he measured the first rotation curve of an elliptical galaxy using . This would be the first in a long series
Michele Cappellari
A short list of advisors and grand-advisors might look like:
- Advisor: Name, Institution (years)
- Co-advisor: Name, Institution (years)
- Grand-advisor: Name, Institution (years)
A blockquote for the obligatory inspirational line from a mentor.
– Some Famous Astronomer