@hackage mathgenealogy1.3.0

Discover your (academic) ancestors!

A command line program for extracting data from the Mathematics Genealogy Project (http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php). Note that this database also contains many entries of computer scientists.

Lookup your entry at http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php and then use that URL as a command line argument. For example, if Carl Gauss wanted to explore his academic ancestors, he would type

mathgenealogy http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=18231

which produces the directed acyclic graph http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22490968/genealogy_of_gauss.svg. See

mathgenealogy --help

for the complete list of options. Requires the dot program, which is part of the GraphViz package (version 2.28.0 or later!) to run.

Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!

Changes in 1.3.0:

  • Switched to HTML-like labels in GraphViz. This is required for the advanced font formatting options. ATTENTION: this needs a recent installation of GraphViz (Linux: 2.28.0; MacOS: 2.29) and will yield best results for SVG output files. If you have an older version of GraphViz or run into issues, try the '--oldtextlabels' option.

  • Downloaded entries are stored locally. This avoids re-downloading the same data if you want to generate multiple graphs of the same entry with different formatting options.

  • Added more options for fine-tuning the fonts and colors. (requested by users)

  • Default output is now SVG, as this is the format best supported by GraphViz.

Changes in 1.2.0:

  • Fixed handling of entries that have multiple degrees. (reported by Dima Pasechnik)

Changes in 1.1.1:

  • Provide error message when given invalid start URL

  • Documentation and code cleanup

Changes in 1.0.0:

  • Choice between PDF and PNG output

  • Optional inclusion of PhD theses in output

Changes in 0.0.2:

  • Fixed handling of trailing commas (reported by Alexander Koessler)