Actually what I really want is an infinite tree below me, but König's lemma says I needed a grand student first.
Diehl's thesis is on time-space tradeoff's for satisfiability. I worked in this area about a decade ago then extended some of that work with Dieter who then worked on it with Scott, a passing of knowledge from generation to generation. The symbolism is so, umm, symbolic.
So as not to slight the other members of the family: Scott's academic aunt, my most recent student Varsha Dani, graduated last quarter. And just two days ago I was back at U. Chicago for Sourav Chakraborty's successful defense (Sourav is a student of Babai).
It's so nice to see the young ones grow up.
The advisor-student relationship is indeed precious. In talking to my students, I find myself saying often "My advisor David Shmoys would say ..." (Oded has made a similar comment about his advisor Shimon Even).
ReplyDeletearavind srinivasan
Thanks, Lance! I enjoyed having you on my committee!
ReplyDeleteAlso, aren't most of the Math/CS people academic descendants of Euler?
ReplyDeleteActually what I really want is an infinite tree below me, but König's lemma says I needed a grand student first.
ReplyDeleteonly if you limit yourself to finitely many students.
Anonymous 3: No. At the Mathematics Genealogy Project there is an artificial link showing Lagrange as Euler's student. Lagrange, however, has no degree, hence no advisor.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.genealogy.ams.org/id.php?id=17864
Therefore only about 1 in 50 Math/CS graduates have Euler in their pedigree.