I traced my PhD academic lineage all the way back to a self-taught American mathematician at the turn of the 19th century. The chain runs almost entirely through Harvard and early American physics, with a detour through Berkeley and Stanford for the modern atomic-physics generations.

Each entry below was verified against the Mathematics Genealogy Project, the Harvard physics PhD thesis records (1873–1953), National Academies biographical memoirs, and Nobel Foundation sources. Listed from present (me) to past.

Pritwish Agarwal

PhD: Chalmers, Sweden (2028)

Title (provisional): Single Strontium 88 atoms coupled to Nanophotonic Cavities

Nils J. Engelsen

PhD: Stanford, US (2016)

Title: Quantum metrology using large ensembles of entangled atoms

Mark Kasevich

PhD: Stanford, US (1992)

Title: Atomic Interferomtery in an Atomic Fountain

Steven Chu*

PhD: U.C Berkeley, US (1976)

Title: Observation of the Forbidden Magnetic Dipole Transition 6 2P1/2→7 2P1/2 in Atomic Thallium

*Nobel Prize in Physics, 1997 (shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips)

Eugene D. Commins

PhD: Columbia University, US (1958)

Title: Hyperfine structure of the metastable state of singly ionized helium-3

Polykarp Kusch*

PhD: University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, US (1936)

Title: The molecular spectra of caesium and rubidium

*Nobel Prize in Physics, 1955 (shared with Willis Eugene Lamb)

Francis Wheeler Loomis

PhD: Harvard, US (1917)

Title: The heat of vaporization of mercury

Harvey N. Davis

PhD: Harvard, US (1906)

Title: I) A PQ Plane for Thermodynamic Cyclic Analysis, II) The Longitudinal Vibrations of a Rubbed String

John Trowbridge

Doctor of Science: Harvard, US (1873)

Title: I. A New Form of Galvanometer; II. On the Electromotive Actions of Liquids Separated by Membranes; III. On the Electrical Condition of Gas Flames; IV. Ohm’s Law Considered from a Geometrical Point of View; V. Induced Currents and Derived Circuits

Joseph Lovering*

PhD: Harvard, US (1855)

Title: The Application of the Principle of Fluxions to the Solution of Different Problems

*Harvard did not grant physics PhDs until decades later; an A.B. with a thesis was the terminal degree of its time. Lovering would later become the first director of Harvard’s Jefferson Physical Laboratory.

Benjamin Peirce

A.M: Harvard, US (1829)

No formal dissertation in the modern sense. Peirce was the first American mathematician of international research reputation, later Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics at Harvard, and the academic adviser to Joseph Lovering.

Nathaniel Bowditch

Self Taught

Famous work: The New American Practical Navigator (1802) — still in continuous publication, and carried on every commissioned U.S. Navy vessel.

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