Math ability is passed from parent to child with the most famous example being the Bernoulli family. This second generation phenomenon also holds in physics but in that field the Nobel Prize in Physics gives a tool for tracking it, since it has been given out for more than 120 years, and there are on average more than two Nobel Prizes in Physics given each year. There is no comparable award in mathematics but perusing (for example) the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive list of biographies enables the construction of a similar list of notable two-generation pairs of mathematicians.

The following is a list of parent-child pairs who both made contributions to mathematics significant enough to be noted in the citation for a prestigious prize, in an obituary in a major math journal, or in a similarly authoritative source. All are father-son except for Emmy Noether and Cathleen Morawetz. The list is in chronological order by birth date of the parent.

List

ParentNotable forAwardsChildNotable forAwards
Johann BernoulliL'Hôpital's rule catenary brachistochrone curveDaniel BernoulliBernoulli's principle Gamma function
Jacopo RiccatiRiccati equationVincenzo RiccatiIntroduction of hyperbolic functions
Giulio Carlo de' Toschi di FagnanoDiscovery of addition and multiplication formulas for arcs of lemniscateGiovanni FagnanoFagnano's problem
Farkas BolyaiWallace–Bolyai–Gerwien theoremJanos BolyaiNon-Euclidean geometry
Elie CartanStructure of Lie groups exterior algebra moving frameHenri CartanCartan's theorems A and B Projective moduleÉmile Picard Medal Wolf Prize
Max NoetherBrill–Noether theory Noether's formula Noether inequalityEmmy NoetherNoether's theorem Noetherian Property
Stanisław ZarembaWork in Mathematical analysisStanisław Krystyn ZarembaWork on Low-discrepancy sequences
George David BirkhoffErgodic TheoremBocher Memorial PrizeGarrett BirkhoffUniversal algebraGeorge David Birkhoff Prize
J. L. SyngeSynge's theoremCathleen MorawetzWork on equations of mixed type, with its striking consequences for the theory of flow around airfoils, work on local energy decay for waves in the complement of an obstacle, and results concerning the existence of transonic flow with shocks.Leroy P. Steele Prize
Emil ArtinSolved Hilbert's seventeenth problem partially solved Hilbert's ninth problemMichael ArtinArtin approximation theorem Algebraic spacesLeroy P. Steele Prize Wolf Prize
Petr NovikovWord problem for groupsSergei NovikovAdams–Novikov spectral sequence Surgery theoryFields Medal
David MilmanKrein–Milman theoremVitali MilmanWork in geometric measure theory Concentration of measureIsrael Prize in mathematics
David George KendallStatistical shape analysisFellow of the Royal SocietyWilfrid KendallWork in Stochastic geometry President of the Bernoulli Society (2013–2015)
Jacques-Louis LionsLions–Magenes lemmaJohn von Neumann Prize Japan PrizePierre-Louis LionsViscosity solutionFields Medal
Takashi OnoWork in Number theory Algebraic groupsKen OnoWork in Number theoryPresidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
Joram LindenstraussJohnson–Lindenstrauss lemmaIsrael Prize Stefan Banach MedalElon Lindenstraussmajor advance on Littlewood conjectureFields Medal

See also