The idea hit Pete Scully while he waited for a London Underground train.
For 16 years, Scully had been mulling over how to revamp a family tree of the Department of Statistics faculty. Back in 2008 — when UC Davis celebrated its centennial — Yue-Pok Mack, a professor emeritus of statistics, created the department’s original family tree, tracing each faculty member’s academic lineage — their mentors, their mentors’ mentors, and so on and so on.
“Since then, we’ve grown quite a lot,” said Scully, the department’s management services officer. “We’ve almost doubled our faculty; people have come and people have left.”
With the turnover and transitions, Scully knew that the Department of Statistics family tree would eventually need updating. He began to keep a meticulously researched spreadsheet of faculty academic lineages.
When new professors joined the department, Scully researched them on the Mathematics Genealogy Project, a website dedicated to compiling data about mathematicians across the globe. He then added their information to his ever-growing spreadsheet.
“It was an overwhelming thing to do because I couldn’t add things to Professor Mack’s display because it was a big thing that we presented to the chancellor at the time and it’s on display in our lounge,” Scully said. “So I thought, ‘I want to create a new one.’”
During a recent trip to England, Scully thought about the project while waiting for the tube. As he stared up at the London Underground map, the idea struck him. He could base the family tree’s design on the London Underground map.
“I became a bit obsessed with it after that,” Scully said. “I started working on it while I was in England during the evenings.”
The resultant family tree is a mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic display. Department of Statistics faculty members are listed on the graphic’s right-hand side. As one scans to the left, the graphic reaches back in time all the way to the 1400s. Pillars of mathematics dot the tree, including Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Desiderius Erasmus and Carl Friedrich Gauss, among many others.
Reflecting on Scully’s creation, Professor Jiming Jiang, chair of the Department of Statistics, recalled a conversation he had with his father.
“My father once told me that ‘Genius people talk about ideas, and intelligent people talk about events.’ ‘What about ordinary people?’ I asked curiously. ‘Ordinary people talk about people,’ he said.”
“To me, my dad was at least partially wrong,” Jiang continued. “People are the most important part in the history of science and statistics is no exception. We can’t stop talking about people. As Pete mentioned, in the history of the department, intelligent and genius people have come and gone. But the Department of Statistics is here to stay and grow, forever."
Much like a real tree, the Department of Statistics family tree is a living thing. New lineages are added when new faculty join the department, sprouting like branches, or new subway lines. Scully hopes to eventually make a similar display for Department of Statistics alumni.
You can now see the Department of Statistics family tree on display in the department’s main office in the Mathematical Sciences Building. View a large version of the Department of Statistics Faculty Genealogy.
