Math on the Web: People

Finding Math People

Acknowledgment: The following is derived from reading Finding Addresses at U Pennsylvania, and other guides mentioned below.

The best way to find addresses whether postal, e-mail or on the Web, is of course, to ask someone who knows: for instance someone whom you have reason to believe has had contact with the one sought. In fact that's probably the most common way. If you don't have someone to answer your question then you can use several approaches to finding an address, and if one doesn't work you may want to try another. They won't all find the same information.

We assume that you are trying to find information about a mathematician, though the methods apply mutatis mutandis for members of other professions. What you can do depends on what you already know about your target:

If you know, or suspect, someone is a member of a society, search that directory.
If you know, or think, that someone is at a given university or company, search its directory.
If you know a computer or domain that you think is associated with you or target search there.

Actually you may use the methods above indirectly. For instance, if you can find an e-mail address for someone working at the same place, you can use it as a basis for a guess of a computer to search using netfind as described below.

[To be continued]