  Academic esteem is difficult to quantify in objective terms. Network theory
offers the opportunity to use a mathematical formalism to model both the esteem
associated with an academic and the relationships between academic colleagues.
Early attempts using this line of reasoning have focused on intellectual
genealogy as constituted by supervisor student networks. The process of
examination is critical in many areas of study but has not played a part in
existing models. A network theoretical "social" model is proposed as a tool to
explore and understand the dynamics of esteem in the academic hierarchy. It is
observed that such a model naturally gives rise to the idea that the esteem
associated with a node in the graph (the esteem of an individual academic) can
be viewed as a dynamic quantity that evolves with time based on both local and
non-local changes in the properties in the network. The toy model studied here
includes both supervisor-student and examiner-student relationships. This gives
an insight into some of the key features of academic genealogies and naturally
leads to a proposed model for "esteem propagation" on academic networks. This
propagation is not solely directed forward in time (from teacher to progeny)
but sometimes also flows in the other direction. As collaborators do well, this
reflects well on those with whom they choose to collaborate and those that
taught them. Furthermore, esteem as a quantity continues to be dynamic even
after the end of a relationship or career. In other words, esteem can be
thought of as flowing both forward and backward in time.
