The Astronomy Genealogy Project is ten years old: Here are ten ways you can use it

TL;DR

The Astronomy Genealogy Project (AstroGen) has compiled extensive data on astronomy-related doctorates worldwide since 2013, providing valuable resources for research, historical analysis, and educational purposes.

Contribution

This paper introduces ten practical ways to utilize the AstroGen database, highlighting its comprehensive coverage and potential applications in astronomy history and education.

Findings

Nearly complete data for 38 countries

Over 37,000 individuals with astronomy doctorates

More than two-thirds of theses are publicly accessible online

Abstract

The Astronomical Genealogy Project (AstroGen) has been underway since January 2013. This project of the Historical Astronomy Division (HAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has been online since July 2020, courtesy of the AAS. The volunteers of the AstroGen team have systematically searched online directories, mostly at individual university libraries, for astronomy-related doctoral theses equivalent to the modern, research-based Ph.D. We now claim to be 'nearly complete' for 38 countries, although some have not been updated for a year or two or three. The website contains a page for each astronomer and advisor, with links to the persons, universities, institutes, and the theses themselves. More than two-thirds of the theses are online in full, although some require access to a library with a subscription. There is information about nearly 37,000 individuals who have earned astronomy-related doctorates and another 5400 who have supervised them, but may not have earned such degrees themselves. Most of the latter have not yet been evaluated, but probably a majority earned doctorates in other fields, such as physics or geology. We present some of the results of our research and discuss ten ways the reader might make use of the project.