I have long been interested in both genealogy and physics and have
recently become more interested in physics genealogy, following the chain
of tradition from PhD advisor to student for generations. There is
apparently a long and rich tradition of tracing one's academic ancestors
back to the days of Newton and Leibnitz, a tradition embodied by the
impressive undertaking of the Mathematics Genealogy
Project run by the math department at North Dakota State
University. As there is currently no complete analogy for physics, I
decided to start by trying to compile my own little branch of the
tree. To my great delight, I soon discovered that I am a direct
descendant of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, one of the greatest high energy
astrophysicists in the past century (and thus by default one of the
greatest of all time!).
After a short bit of poking around on the web, I found a few of
Chandra's other students and began to contact them with inquiries of
their own students and teachers, slowly building up a family tree of
Chandra's academic descendants. When the number of students reached
250, I realized the project was too large to complete by myself
through individual requests and queries. Thus I turn to the power of
the internet with the hope that launching this website will provide an
efficient way of gathering genealogical data and completing the family
tree as a tribute to Chandra's impressive legacy as a scientist and
teacher.
Current Status
At this point, I have compiled a partial list of roughly 250
academic descendants of Chandra, based largely on personal queries and
some web-based (i.e. not entirely reliable) research. The list is
certainly incomplete and almost certainly incorrect in places. Future
work will include a complete database of students' PhD institutions,
thesis titles, graduation dates, and present employment. Additionally,
I plan to include biographical information about Chandra and links to
relevant sites.
The future success of this project depends largely on the input of the
astronomy and astrophysics community to correct any inaccuracies and
to supply any omissions. To do so, please
email me at Chandra.Heritage_AT_gmail.com .
Chandra Family Tree
(jpg, pdf)
Last revised November, 2007
