My academic ancestry: Cox,Daniels,,,,,,,,,,,,,Newton,,,Galileo!

Recently I wrote a short article in memory of David Cox, who died in January aged 97. David had been my PhD adviser (at Imperial College London in the 1980s) and we became good friends.

While writing that article I discovered the magic of the online Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP). And, in particular, I discovered that through David Cox I am a direct descendant of Isaac Newton and also of Galileo Galilei!

It seems that Galileo, whose doctorate was completed in Pisa in 1585, remarkably has more than 30,000 known academic descendants — so I must have a lot of academic cousins out there.

Ancestry in the MGP is traced through the relationship of PhD supervisor and student. David Cox was my academic father, Henry Daniels my grandfather, etc. Thirteen generations before Daniels we find Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1668) and three generations before that is Galileo Galilei (Pisa, 1585).