Russel Academic Family

The slideshow at the bottom of this page was compiled to celebrate the career of my Ph.D. advisor, Prof. William B. Russel, Princeton University, on the occasion of his retirement party, held June 19, 2015.

Slide 1 is based on an academic tree compiled by Prof. Norman Wagner, University of Delaware. The academic genealogy goes back through some greats of chemical engineering, including Prof. Andreas Acrivos and Prof. Neal Amundson, back through to physicists and mathematicians including Poisson, Lagrange, Euler, the Bernoullis, and Leibniz. As of this writing, the tree is consistent with information found on the academic genealogy website of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).

Slide 2 traces the academic family back further and shows connections to Hooke, Boyle, Descartes, Huygens, and my personal favorite scientist, Galileo. This was provided by Prof. Ning Wu, Colorado School of Mines. As of this writing, I have not been able to verify all of the connections on this tree, but it is fun to look at, nevertheless!

Slide 3, the "Russel Academic Tree Colloidal Crystal", is one depiction of the Russel academic genealogy. The "ancestors" are shown in the upper right-hand corner. Prof. Russel is shown as a substrate, appropriately colored with Princeton orange and black tiger stripes. The Ph.D. students and postdocs of Prof. Russel are shown in the first two layers of the crystal, also colored orange. Students and postdocs who have gone on to academic careers and have produced additional Ph.D. students have a second color outlining them, and their students (the Russel "grandchildren") are colored with a transition from orange to a second color; for example, Prof. Alice Gast, Imperial College London, is outlined in red, and her students transition from orange to red. Students of these students (Russel "great-grandchildren") then transition from this second color to a third color, and so on for future generations. Two individuals have been co-advised for Ph.D.s by multiple members of the tree: Dr. Benjamin Landrum (co-advised by Prof. Russel and Prof. Roseanna Zia, Cornell University) and Dr. Mark Pancyzk (co-advised by Prof. Wagner and Prof. Eric Furst, University of Delaware). These individuals have stripes of multiple colors, accordingly. Dr. Mark Pancyzk currently appears twice in the tree; I will do some annealing to see if I can get the grains corresponding to the Wagner and Furst branches properly aligned to avoid this in a future version.

The slideshow below was presented at the retirement dinner, and contains photos from several eras of the research group, provided by former students and colleagues.

I have included both Ph.D. students and postdocs of Prof. Russel, but beyond the first generation, I have only included Ph.D. students for brevity and simplicity (the tree becomes too large, and the connections become even more complicated; there are many individuals who received their Ph.D. from one member of the tree and completed a postdoc with another).

There are surely some errors and omissions. The branches for Prof. Sangtae Kim, Purdue University, and Prof. Chris Durning, Columbia, are based on an earlier tree and may be out of date. I am still receiving information from Russel descendants and will update the tree as I receive information. If you notice any errors, please email me at surita.bhatia@stonybrook.edu, and I will post an update. I am also working on a more traditional depiction of the genealogy as a "tree," and I will post this as soon as it is available. So, check back again soon!