In mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, Harry Bernard Coonce (born 1939) is an American mathematician notable for being the originator of the now-popular Mathematics Genealogy Project

Mathematics Genealogy Project

The Mathematics Genealogy Project is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians. As of September, 2010, it contained information on approximately 145,000 mathematical scientists who contribute to "research-level mathematics"...

, launched in 1996, a web-based catalog of mathematics doctoral advisors and students.

Coonce conceived of the idea while reading the unsigned thesis of his academic advisor Malcome S. Robert, in the Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 library, and wondering who his advisor’s advisor was. The amount of time it took Coonce, without the existence of a central database of such information, to find out that Robertson’s advisor was C. Einar Hille, gave him the idea for the project. In a 2000 interview, Coonce estimated that the project would top out at about 80,000 entries. As of 12 July 2010, there were 143,013 entries.

Education

Coonce completed his PhD in 1969 at the University of Delaware with a dissertation on A Variational Method for Functions of Bounded Boundary Rotation. Coonce presently is a retired mathematics professor of Minnesota State University, Mankato.