Phdtree: create and discover your academic family history | Hacker News Reader

Phdtree: create and discover your academic family history

phdtree.org

24 pointsphdtree20 comments

We're a tiny team of two people working on this side project over nights and weekends. Essentially it is a Wiki site that allows users to create & edit their academic family tree. So far all the basic wiki functions like CRUD, tracking edit history, compare different versions, reverting back to previous versions, simple search, advanced search, etc are completed. It is built with Django/Python.

We would really appreciate it if Hacker News community can provide some feedback/comments/suggestions. Many many thanks :)

If you must have a login, use an existing ID system, don't roll your own. Its too much of a security risk these days; use Facebook, Google, Live ID, or whatever.

I was going to fill in the tree beneath my adviser, but I really can't afford to come up with yet another password for a one off account.

Thanks for the feedback, added to to-do list, will enable users to log in using third party authentication like facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+, etc.

Hmm, how did you get the data? 100% user added wikiness, or did it pull from some other 'tree' sources like Neurotree (http://neurotree.org/neurotree/)?

I was able to find my girlfriend, which was pretty cool.

One piece of feedback from her to have in the tree itself, is each person's institution.

I found myself and none of my advisor's other students, so I'm assuming that part of the data came from http://academictree.org, which has the same problem.

Similar idea to The Mathematics Genealogy (which is, as the name implies, only for mathematicians).

http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/

Yes, we want to build a database of academic family tree across all fields, not just math, not just physics, not just chemistry. Scientific research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary.

When you think about it, the modern discipline of computer science emerged in the 20th century. Most of the first generation computer scientists are actually either physicists or mathematicians.

Or philosophers--specifically logicians.

Although the name might imply it is only for mathematicians, they are pretty loose with that. It also has many physicists, astronomers, and chemists.

This is pretty neat, though this was available for math already. I wish you would aggregate some information up the tree, i.e. not only the list of students but a count of the students' students, etc...

Wasn't this posted just a few weeks ago?

yes it was. I guess that's why this one points to the search page instead of the front page…

I found myself, but some of the info was incorrect. I created an account and edited the record. I wasn't sure where the info came from, but I see it pulls from neurotree (which is also incorrect). Nice front end though, much nicer than neurotree :) Keep up the good work

Thank you for correcting any errors!

I really like this idea!

Here's a tip: Brazil has a really large academic platform (Plaforma Lattes) which is widely used. I'm not sure it's possible, but it would be great if you could use the information. Check it here: http://lattes.cnpq.br/ (plus, the search page: http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/busca.do?metodo=apr...)

I'm aware that Brazil is not exactly the center of the Academic world, but PhD research is a pretty globalized endeavour. Plus, it would be fun to see how the pedigree lines crosses borders.

Plus, this might be one of the largest database in the world. Every single Brazilian professor I've meet has a profile there.

Thanks, this is very valuable information, checking it out right now.

Just did a search on PG, here is PG's profile: http://phdtree.org/scholar/graham-paul-2/

Didn't know he had a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard in the early 90s.

doesn't seem to work.. neither for myself or my former phd supervisor.

Please create an account and add your and your phd supervisor to the database. The site is meant to be a wiki, anyone can edit/add new profiles.

Blimey, my family history goes back to Leibniz, made my day.

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