Other stuff

A space for things that don't fit elsewhere.

Canberra weather station (Deakin)

I keep an online home weather station running, so you can check the weather conditions, clouds, geomagnetic field, sky temperature, etc., and even the view out my study window during the day: Deakinwx.

Academic Genealogy

The American Mathematical Society has developed the concept - the intellectual influence heritage as distinct from the genetic. See the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

I've done a bit of homework on that site and elsewhere and have discovered connections to Hubble, Newton and Galileo!

Here is the 'intellectual genealogy' (supervisors, mentors or major influences), listing degree or thesis date and university; traced via my thesis supervisors:

Michael Dopita (Manchester) 1973
Franz Kahn (Oxford) 1949
Sydney Chapman (Cambridge) 1914
Horace Lamb (Cambridge)  1872
James Clerk Maxwell (Cambridge) 1854 / George Stokes (Cambridge) 1841
William Hopkins (Cambridge) 1830
Adam Sedgwick (Cambridge) 1811
Thomas Jones (Cambridge) 1782
Thomas Postlethwaite (Cambridge) 1756
Stephen Whisson (Cambridge) 1742
Walter Taylor (Cambridge) 1723
Robert Smith (Cambridge) 1715
Roger Cotes (Cambridge) 1706
Isaac Newton (Cambridge) 1668
Isaac Barrow (Cambridge) 1652
Vincenzio Viviani (Firenze) (2 supervisors/mentors, a and b)
(a)...
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (Pisa)
Ostilio Ricci (Brescia)
Niccolò Tartaglia Fontana (Padova)
(b)...
Evangelista Torricelli (Roma)

and also:

Helmut Jerjen (Basel) 1995
Bruno Binggeli (Basel) 1981
Alan Sandage (Caltech) 1953
Edwin Hubble (Chicago) 1917
Edwin B Frost (Potsdam) 1890
Hermann Vogel (Jena) 1868
Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (Basel) 1859
Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann (Berlin) 1847
Heinrich Gustav Magnus (Berlin) 1827
Eilhard Mitscherlich (Göttingen) 1814
Friedrich Stromeyer (Göttingen) 1800
Johann Friedrich Gmelin (Tübingen) 1768
Phillip Friedrich Gmelin (Tübingen) 1742
Burchard David Mauchart (Tübingen) 1722
Elias Rudolph Camerarius, Jr. (Tübingen) 1691
Elias Rudolph Camerarius, Sr. (Tübingen) 1663
Georg Balthasar Metzger (Jena, Basel) 1644, 1650
Johann Georg Macasius (Jena) 1638, 1640
Johannes Musaeus (Erfurt) 1634
Georg Grosshain (Halle-Wittenberg) 1629
Paul Röber (Halle-Wittenberg) 1613
Ambrosius Rhodius (Halle-Wittenberg) 1600, 1610
Melchior Jöstel (Halle-Wittenberg) 1583, 1600 (2 supervisors/mentors, a and b)
(a)...
Valentin (Valentinus Otho) Otto (Halle-Wittenberg) 1570
Georg Joachim von Leuchen Rheticus (Halle-Wittenberg) 1535
Johannes Volmar (Halle-Wittenberg) 1515
Bonifazius Erasmi (Halle-Wittenberg) 1509
Nicolaus Copernicus (Jagielloński/Bologna/Ferrara/Padova) 1499
Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara (Firenze) 1483
Johannes Müller Regiomontanus (Leipzig, Wien) 1457
(b)...
Andreas Schato (Halle-Wittenberg) 1562, 1578
Sebastian (Theodoricus) Dietrich (Halle-Wittenberg) 1544
Erasmus Reinhold (Halle-Wittenberg) 1535
Jakob Milich (Freiburg im Breisgau, Wien) 1520, 1524
Desiderius Erasmus (Erasmus of Rotterdam) (Montaigu) 1497, 1506

That's a daunting list, and not even complete, some dating back to 1380...

Canberra region ferns

Anyone interested in the local fern flora might like to take a look at some pages I first published over 10 years ago: Ferns of the Canberra Region.