Gregory Palamas 1363

This stuff blows my mind.

Gregory Palamas (1296–135), spelled Γρηγόριος Παλαμάς in greek, was a monk on Mount Athos, a place I've visited with my father two times. It is a beautiful peninsula in northern Greece, scattered with old monasteries. Furthermore, only men have been allowed on the peninsula for around a thousand years.

Palamas eventually became the Archbishop of Thessaloniki, which is a city I incidentally happened to live in from 1995-1996. Below is a picture of Gregory Palamas, in the form of an icon.

In his early youth, my father (Georgios Kefaloukos) was also a monk on Mount Athos. There he learned the art of icon painting, and could have painted one of Palamas, although I don't think he did. Below is a picture of my father taken on Mount Athos.

When I first heard about the Math in Genealogy project, I was thrilled to find out that a Gregory Palamas, who lived long ago and was the Archbishop of Thessaloniki, apparently had a transitive relationship with people in science through an unbroken chain of mentoring (112861 "descendants" in total). I became curious, and wanted to find out which famous people he might be connected to.

While Palamas was the Archbishop of Thessaloniki he mentored Nilos Kabasilas (1298-1363), who later replaced him as Archbishop. Nilos in turn mentored Demetrios Kydones (1333-1397) and this lineage of mentoring continues in an unbroken line, through many scholars and countries, until we eventually arrive in Germany and at the famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß in 1799.

Gauß himself mentored a few students, one of whom was Christian Ludwig Gerling (1788-1864), who went on to mentor Julius Plücker (1801-1868) and so forth. Again the chain of mentoring continues until we reach Marcos Vaz Salles, a Brazilian Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen, which is the city I was born in... And here comes the surprising part, for me at least, because Marcos is now mentoring me, together with Professor Martin Zachariasen!

An unbroken line of guys mentoring guys:

1. Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, lived c. 1135 – c. 1213 (Wikipedia)
2. Kamal al Din Ibn Yunus
3. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, lived 1201 – 1274 (Wikipedia)
4. Shams ad-Din Al-Bukhari, Maragheh Observatory, lived 13th century (mcgill)
5. Gregory Chioniadis, Ilkhans Court at Tabriz, 1296 (Wikipedia)
6. Manuel Bryennios, lived c. 1275 – c. 1340 (Wikipedia)
7. Theodore Metochites, 1315
8. Gregory Palamas
9. Nilos Kabasilas, 1363
10. Demetrios Kydones
11. Manuel Chrysoloras
12. Guarino da Verona, 1408
13. Vittorino da Feltre, Università di Padova, 1416
14. Ognibene (Omnibonus Leonicenus) Bonisoli da Lonigo, Università di Mantova
15. Niccolò Leoniceno, Medicinae Dr., Università di Padova, 1453
16. Antonio Musa Brasavola, Medicinae Dr., Università degli Studi di Ferrara, 1520
17. Gabriele Falloppio, Medicinae Dr., Università di Padova / Università degli Studi di Ferrara, 1547
18. Hieronymus (Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente) Fabricius, Medicinae Dr., Università di Padova, 1559
19. Adriaan van den Spieghel, Medicinae Dr., Université Catholique de Louvain / Università di Padova, 1603
20. Adolph Vorstius, Philosophiae Dr., Medicinae Dr., Universiteit Leiden / Università di Padova, 1619, 1622
21. Franciscus de le Boë Sylvius, Medicinae Dr., Universiteit Leiden / Universität Basel, 1634, 1637
22. Rudolf Wilhelm Krause, Medicinae Dr., Universiteit Leiden, 1671
23. Simon Paul Hilscher, Medicinae Dr., Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 1704
24. Johann Andreas Segner, Magister artium, Medicinae Dr. Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 1726, 1734
25. Johann Georg Büsch, Magister, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1752
26. Johann Elert Bode, Handelsakademie Hamburg
27. Johann Friedrich Pfaff, Dr. phil. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen 1786
28. Carl Friedrich Gauß, Ph.D., Universität Helmstedt, 1799
29. Christian Ludwig Gerling, Dr. phil., Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1812
30. Julius Plücker, Ph.D., Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1823
31. C. Felix (Christian) Klein, Dr. phil., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 1868
32. Philipp Furtwängler, Ph.D., Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1896
33. Nikolaus Hofreiter, Dr. phil., Universität Wien, 1927
34. Edmund Hlawka, Dr. phil., Universität Wien, 1938
35. Hermann Adolf Maurer, Ph.D., Technische Universität Wien, 1965
36. Hans-Peter Kriegel, Dr. rer. nat., Universität Fridericiana zu Karlsruhe, 1976
37. Bernhard Seeger, Dr.-Ing., Universität Bremen, 1989
38. Jens-Peter Dittrich, Dr. rer. nat., Philipps-Universität Marburg, 2002
39. Marcos Antonio Vaz Salles, Ph.D., Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, 2008
40. Me, getting mentored in 2013

Daniel Grosu, an Associate Professor at Wayne State University has managed to track the mentor lineage through Palamas and even further back to John Mauropous (990-1092), who was a scholar at the University of Constantinople. He was a Byzantine Greek poet, hymnographer and author of letters and orations, living in the 11th century AD. Other scholars have since then tracked the lineage further back to Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, an astronomer living in 12th century Persia. And that is where the tale ends. For now.