Genealogy of theoretical physicists

It is possible to build an academic genealogy of researchers and scholars in theoretical physics by following the pedigree of their thesis advisors. If an advisor did not exist, or if the field of physics is different, a link can be constructed by using the university the physicist graduated from. The main interest is on trees containing someone of the highest distinction (Nobel Prize in Physics, Fields Medal, or similar merit).

Conventions on this page

"Italic" tells us that the subtree for this name appears in some other place in the tree.
If the PhD date and school is known, it is listed in parenthesis.
Bold typeface is used for Nobel prizes, although it May Be preferable to add a notation instead, for typographic reasons.

Format:

[[Full Name]] (school, year of PhD) Other notes. [http....url.where.verifying.information.may.be.found]

If physicists are advised by mathematicians, their genealogy can be readily traced using the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

Founding fathers

Max Planck (Munich, 1879, Alexander von Brill)
- Max von Laue (Berlin, 1903)
  - Leo Szilard (Berlin, 1922)
- Gustav Hertz (Berlin, 1911)
- Walter Schottky(Berlin, 1912)
- Walther Bothe (Berlin, 1914)

Albert Einstein (Zurich, 1905)
- Ernst Straus(Columbia, 1950)

Arnold Sommerfeld (Königsberg, 1891, v. Lindeman)
- Peter Debye (Munich, 1908)
- Gregor Wentzel (Munich, 1921)
  - Markus E. Fierz (Zürich, 1936)
  - Res Jost (Zürich, 1946)
- Wolfgang Pauli (1921, Munich)
  - Nicholas Kemmer (1935, Zurich, also under Gregor Wentzel?)
    - Ron Shaw (1955, Cambridge) 1
    - Sergio Albeverio
    - Klaus Hepp (1963,Zurich, also Res Jost) 2
      - Jürg Fröhlich 3
      - Konrad Osterwalder (1970 Zurich, also Res Jost) 4
- Hans A. Bethe (1928, Munich?)
  - Freeman Dyson(Cornell)
  - Robert Eugene Marshak (1939?!, Cornell)
  - Roman Jackiw (1966, Cornell, Hans A. Bethe, & K. G. Wilson ) 5
    - Stefano Forte (1987 MIT)
      - Joan Rojo (U Barcelona, Coadv. J. I. Latorre)
  - John Irwin (1963, Cornell)
- P S Epstein
  - Boris Podolsky (1928 Caltech)
- Werner Heisenberg (1923, Munich)
  - Felix Bloch (1928 Leipzig)
  - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga?? (Leipzig & Tokio, 1939)
  - Rudolph E. Peierls
    - John Bell (Birmingham, 1956) (coadv. Paul Matthews)
    - Edwin Ernest Salpeter (Birmingham, 1948) 6
  - Edward Teller (1929 Leipzig)
    - Marvin Leonard Goldberger (Chicago, 1948, coadv Fermi?)
      - Franz Gross (Princeton,1963)
    - Chen Ning Yang (Chicago, 1948)(coadv Fermi?)
    - Lincoln Wolfenstein 7
  - Hans Kastrup
    - Martin Bojowald (Aachen, 2000)
  - Reinhard Oehme
  - Friedwardt Winterberg (Göttingen, 1955)
- Herbert Froehlich (Munich, 1930)
  - Sebastian Doniach (Liverpool, 1958)
- Walter Franz (Munich, 1934)
  - L Tewordt (Munster, 1953)
    - Uwe Brandt (Hamburg, 1969)
      - H Leschke (Dortmund, 1975)

Max Born (1880, Berlin, Carl Runge)
- Friedrich Hund (Göttingen 1922)
  - Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
- Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1930, Göttingen)
- Pascual Jordan (1924, Göttingen)
- Julius Robert Oppenheimer (Göttingen 1927)
  - Willis Lamb (1938, Berkeley)
  - Philip Morrison (1940, Berkeley)
  - David Bohm (1943, Berkeley)
    - Yakir Aharonov (1960, Bristol) 8
- Victor Frederick Weisskopf (Göttingen, 1931) 9 10 (Born was formally advisor, but thesis work was done under co-advisor Eugene Wigner as Born was sick)
  - J. D. Jackson (MIT, 1949)
    - Gorden L. Kane (Illinois U., Urbana, 1963)
  - F. L. Friedman (MIT, 1949)
  - Murray Gell-Mann (MIT, 1951) 11
    - Kenneth G. Wilson (Caltech,1961)
      - Michael E. Peskin (Cornell U., 1978) 12
    - Sidney Coleman 13
      - Anthony Zee (1970)
      - David J. Griffiths (Harvard, 1970) 14
      - Erik Weinberg (1973)
      - H. David Politzer (1974, Harvard) 15
      - Lee Smolin (coadv. Stanley Deser) 16
      - Jacques Distler (Harvard) 17
  - Kerson Huang (1953, MIT) 18

Niels Bohr (Copenhagen, 1911, C. Christiansen)

Lev Landau (Leningrad U, 1927)
- Boris L. Ioffe
  - Mikhail A. Shifman

Mayflower branches, (i.e. North America), and other

I. I. Rabi (Columbia, 1927; A. Willis (waw AG Webster, waw von Helmholtz))
- Julian Schwinger (Columbia, 1939) Schwinger advised over 70 PhD's , according to Wikipedia
  - Bryce DeWitt (Harvard, 1950)
  - Ben R. Mottelson (Harvard?, 1950)
    - Torleif Erik Oskar Ericson ( Lund U., 1959)
  - L. M. Garrido 1955 (¿?) 19 Spanish School genealogy list
  - Charles M. Sommerfield (Harvard, 1957)
    - Howard Georgi (Yale, 1971) 20
      - John Hagelin (Harvard, 1981) (coadv Sidney Coleman?)
      - Lawrence J. Hall (Harvard, 1981)
        
        Nima Arkani-Hamed (Berkeley, 1997)
      - Lisa Randall (Harvard, 1987) 21
        
        Csaba Csaki (1997)
      - Andrew G. Cohen
      - Ann Nelson
      - David B. Kaplan
  - Sheldon Lee Glashow (Harvard, 1959) 22
  - Kalyana T. Mahanthappa (Harvard, 1961) 23
  - Norman J. M. Horing (Harvard, 1964) 24
  - Roy Glauber
  - Walter Kohn
- Norman F. Ramsey (Columbia, 1940)
  - Daniel Kleppner
    - W. Phillips
    - David E. Pritchard
      - Eric A. Cornell
    - Carl E. Wieman
- Vernon Hughes (Columbia 1950)
- Martin L. Perl (Columbia, 1955)
  - Samuel Chao Chung Ting (Michigan, 1962) also adv. Lw W. Jones

Enrico Fermi (Pisa, 1922; Prof. Luigi Puccianti)
- Emilio G. Segrè (Rome, 1928) (Co-Recipient - Nobel Physics 1959)
- James Rainwater (1946, Manhattan Project)
  - Val Logsdon Fitch
- Chen Ning Yang (Chicago, 1948) (coadv Teller?)
- Geoffrey Chew (Chicago, 1948)
  - David J. Gross (Berkeley, 1966)
    - Frank Wilczek 25
      - Finn Larsen (1996, Princeton)
    - Edward Witten
      - Cumrun Vafa (1985, Princeton)
      - Eva Silverstein (1996, Princeton)
  - John H. Schwarz (Berkeley, 1966) Dirac Medal 1989
    - Michael R. Douglas (Caltech, 1988)
    - Cosmas K. Zachos (Caltech, 1979)
- Owen Chamberlain (Chicago, 1948) (Co-Recipient - Nobel Physics 1959)
- Tsung-Dao Lee (Chicago, 1950) 26
- Willem Van Rensselaer Malkus (Chicago, 1950) 27
- Jack Steinberger
  - Melvin Schwartz
- Sam Treiman (Chicago, 1952; co-advisor: John Simpson (OW Richardson tree) )
  - Stephen L. Adler (1964) 28
  - Curtis Callan (1964) 29
    - Igor R. Klebanov (1986) 30
      - Steven S. Gubser (1998)
    - Peter Woit (1984-5, Princeton (undergrad Harvard))
    - Juan Maldacena (1996, Princeton)
  - Steven Weinberg (Princeton, 1957)
    - John Preskill (Harvard, 1980)
      - Elias Kiritsis (Caltech 1988)
    - Fernando Quevedo (Texas, 1986)
  - K. Fujikawa (1970)
- Marcello Conversi ? 31
  - Carlo Rubbia
- Jerome I. Friedman (Chicago, 1956)

Friedrich Hasenöhrl (Vienna, 1897)
- Karl Herzfeld (Vienna, 1914)
  - John A. Wheeler (Johns Hopkins, 1933)
    - Richard P. Feynman (Princeton, 1942)
      - George Zweig (Caltech, 1963)
      - Thomas L. Curtright (Caltech, 1977)
    - Arthur Wightman (Princeton, 1949)
      - Arthur Jaffe
      - Barry Simon
      - Rafael de la Llave
    - Hugh Everett (Princeton, 1956)
    - Charles Misner (Princeton, 1957)
    - John R. Klauder (Princeton, 1959)
    - Kip Thorne (Princeton, 1965) 32
    - Robert Geroch (Princeton, 1967)
      - Abhay Ashtekar (Chicago, 1974)
    - Jacob D. Bekenstein (Princeton, 1972)
    - Claudio Bunster (Princeton, 1973) (Formerly Claudio Teitelboim)

Eugene Wigner (1925, Berlin, Michael Polanyi)
- John Bardeen (Princeton, 1936)
  - John Schrieffer
- Victor Frederick Weisskopf (coadv. Max Born)

Henry Augustus Rowland (bachelors Rensselaer, 1870; no Ph.D.) 33, 34
- Edwin Hall (Johns Hopkins, 1880)
- Frederick A. Saunders (Johns Hopkins, 1899)
- Joseph Sweetman Ames (Johns Hopkins, 1890)
  - Charles E. Mendenhall (Johns Hopkins, 1898) (coadv. Frederick A. Saunders?)
    - Raymond Thayer Birge (Wisconsin-Madison, 1913)
      - Edward Condon (Berkeley, 1926)
        
        Edwin McMillan (Princeton, 1932) (chemistry Nobel 1951)
        
        Robert Hofstadter (Princeton, 1938) (Nobel 1961)
  - August Herman Pfund (Johns Hopkins, 1906)
    - Richard Threlkeld Cox (Johns Hopkins, 1924)
      - Clifford Shull (NYU, 1941) (Nobel 1994)
    - Haldan Keffer Hartline (M.D. Johns Hopkins, 1927) (physiology & medicine Nobel 1967)
  - William F. Meggers (Johns Hopkins, 1917)
    - Otto Laporte (Munich, 1924)
    - Curtis J. Humphreys (Michigan, 1928)
  - Gregory Breit (Johns Hopkins, 1921)
    - Charles Kittel (Berkeley, 1941)
      - Albert Overhauser (Berkeley, 1951)
      - Morrel H. Cohen (Berkeley, 1952)
        
        James C. Phillips (Chicago, 1956)
        
        Marvin L. Cohen (Chicago, 1964)
        
        John D. Joannopoulos (Berkeley, 1974)
        
        Robert B. Laughlin (MIT, 1979) (Nobel 1998)
      - Alan M. Portis (Berkeley, 1953)
        
        Alan J. Heeger (Berkeley, 1961) (chemistry Nobel 2000)
        
        N. Phuan Ong (Berkeley)
  - Frederick Sumner Brackett (Johns Hopkins, 1922)

R. D. Present
- Frederick Reines (New York U. 1944)
  - William R. Kropp (Case Western Reserve, 1964)
  - Frank A. Nezrick (Case Western Reserve, 1965)

Gilberto Bernardini
- Leon Lederman (Columbia, 1951)

Hideki Yukawa (Kyoto, 1938, K Tamaki )
- Donald R. Yennie
  - Stanley J. Brodsky (Minnesota, 1964)
  - Geoffey T. Bodwin (Cornell, 1978)

Ralph H. Fowler (Cambridge, 1915, Archibald Vivian Hill )
- Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (Cambridge, 1926)
  - Dennis W. Sciama (Cambridge, 1953)
    - George Ellis (Cambridge, 1964)
    - Stephen Hawking (Oxford, 1966)
    - Sir Martin Rees (Cambridge, 1967)
      - Roger Blandford (Cambridge, 1974)
    - Brandon Carter (Cambridge, 1968)
      - Patrick Peter (Paris, 1991)
      - Xavier Martin (Paris, 1995)
      - Reinhard Prix (Paris, 2000)
      - Nicolas Chamel (Paris, 2004)
    - David Deutsch (Oxford, 1978)
- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Trinity College, Cambridge, 1933)
  - Jeremiah P. Ostriker (Chicago, 1964)
- Garrett Birkhoff
- Noel B. Slater
- John Lennard-Jones

J. Hans D. Jensen (1932, Hamburg)

Ernest Rutherford (rel J. J. Thomson )
- James Chadwick (M.Sc.)

Georges Charpak (College de France, Paris, 1954)

Abdus Salam (Cambridge, 1951, under N. Kemmer 35 and/or P.T. Matthews)
- R. Shaw (Cambridge, 1955)
- Yuval Neeman (Imperial College, London, 1961)
- Ray F. Streater (Imperial College, London, 1960) 36
- Christopher Isham
- John Moffat (Cambridge, 1958)
- Michael Duff

Léon Van Hove
- Martinus Veltman (Utrecht, 1963)
  - Gerardus 't Hooft (1972)

Henry W. Kendall (,1950?, Martin Deutsch)

Richard E. Taylor (,,Alberta)

Ancient lineages

The Born tree leads to Gauß and then to Otto Mencke.

The Sommerfeld tree leads to Felix Klein and then to Otto Mencke (via Gauß) and Leibniz. The Leibniz heritage, however, is due to the premature death of Klein's advisor, Plücker, which forced a second supervisor for the final examination, namely Rudolf Lipschitz.

Another impressive advisor line in continental Europe descends from Leibniz via among others, Poisson, Lagrange, the Bernoullis, and Euler.

The main American branch's lineage proceeds via von Helmholtz to de Volder (Leiden, 1643-1709).

Otto Mencke (a Epicurus scholar, colleague of Leibnitz)
- Johann Christoph Wichmannshausen
  - Christian August Hausen (see http://www.math.vt.edu/people/renardym/comments.html )
    - Abraham Kaestner
      - Georg Lichtenberg
        
        Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes (also advised by Kaestner)
      - Johann Friedrich Pfaff de ortibus et occasibus siderum
        
        Carl Friedrich Gauss
        
        Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
        
        Heinrich Scherk (also advised by Heinrich Brandes)
        
        Ernst Kummer
        
        Christoph Gudermann
        
        Karl Weierstraß (honorary degree, no PhD)
        
        Carl Runge (also advised by Ernst Kummer)
        
        Max Born
        
        Christian Ludwig Gerling ..ad calculos parallacticos facilitandos explicavit simulque eclipsin solarem die .
        
        Julius Plücker ... quae geometriae altioris et mechanicae basis et fundamenta sunt e serie Tayloria deducit
        
        C. Felix Klein (also advised by Rudolf Lipschitz the last year)
        
        C. L. Ferdinand Lindemann 1873, Erlangen,
        
        Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld Die willkürlichen Functionen in der mathematischen Physik Universität Königsberg 1891
        
        David Hilbert Universität Königsberg 1885
        
        Martin Kutta München 1900
        
        Hermann Minkowski Königsberg 1885

Erhard Weigel (Leipzig 1650) De ascensionibus et descensionibus astronomicis dissertatio
- Gottfried Leibniz (also Schwendendoerffer -law- and Thomasius -phyl- and Huygens)
  - Jacob Bernoulli (distant, via mail)
    - Johann Bernoulli
      - Leonhard Euler
        
        Joseph Lagrange (distant, via mail. Also Beccaria)
        
        Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier
        
        Gustav Dirichlet
        
        Simeon Poisson
        
        Gustav Dirichlet
        
        Leopold Kronecker (also advised by Johann Encke, a disciple of Gauss)
        
        Rudolf Lipschitz
        
        C. Felix Klein
        
        Michel Chasles
        
        Gaston Darboux (École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1866)

External links and sources

Find People
hepnames offers a genealogy tool for High Energy Physics.
http://www.nobel.org/ Nobel website
the Notre Dame genealogy table
http://www.genealogy.ams.org/index.html keeps track of academic genealogy of mathematicians.
S. Chang, Academic Genealogy of American Physicists, AAPPS Bulletin Vol 13, n 6
Spanish school academic genealogy list
Lineage of Kamerlingh Onnes
Lineage of Lorentz and Van der Waals
Mathematics Genealogy Project

Main Menu

Genealogy of theoretical physicists

Conventions on this page

Founding fathers

Mayflower branches, (i.e. North America), and other

Ancient lineages

See also

External links and sources

Genealogy of theoretical physicists

Conventions on this page

Founding fathers

Mayflower branches, (i.e. North America), and other

Ancient lineages

See also

External links and sources

See Also

Robin Marjoribanks

Copenhagen Spirit

United States gravity control propulsion research