Drawing a TikZ Graph

Question

I'd like to try and include this graph in a Beamer presented, and would like to draw it using TikZ instead of including a PDF (for a number of reasons). I honestly have no idea how to get started and when I tried to look at the tkz-graph library all of the documentation was in French. I'm not necessarily single minded on using that package but if nothing else I'd appreciate some hints on how to even approach this. I also tried to base a solution off of this example: texample.net sample graph but couldn't get it to compile at all. I know there's not MWE but I honestly have no real idea how to approach this.

I just saw a response but I attempted something along the following lines:

\documentclass[10pt,tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage[sfdefault]{FiraSans}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,shapes,positioning}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[
    thick,
    >=stealth',
    shorten >=1pt,
    auto,
    every node/.style={
        rectangle,
        rounded corners,
        draw}
]
\node (1) {Aristotle};
\node (2) [right = of 1] {Chrisyppus};
\node (3) [below right = of 1] {Leibniz};
\node (4) [below left = of 1] {Boole};
\node (5) [below = of 4] {Frege};
\node (6) [right = of 5] {Tarski};
\node (7) [below right = of 3] {Post};
\node (8) [below = of 6] {McCarthy};
\node (9) [left = of 8] {Minski};
\node (10) [right = of 8] {Kowalski};
\node (11) [below = of 7] {Colmerauer};
\node (12) [below left = of 8] {McDermott};
\node (13) [right = 0.25cm of 12] {Reiter};
\node (14) [below right = of 8] {Moore};
\node (15) [below = 2cm of 8] {Gelfond};
\node (16) [below = of 11] {Prolog};
\node (17) [below = of 16] {Clark};
\node (18) [below = of 15] {A-Prolog};
\path[->]
    (1) edge (3)
    (2) edge (3)
    (4) edge (5)
    (5) edge (6)
    (6) edge (8)
    (6) edge (9)
    (3) edge (10)
    (6) edge (10)
    (7) edge (10)
    (7) edge (11)
    (8) edge (12)
    (8) edge (13)
    (8) edge (14)
    (8) edge (15)
    (8) edge (14)
    (14) edge (15)
    (11) edge (16)
    (10) edge (16)
    (16) edge (17)
    (17) edge (15)
    (15) edge (18)
    ;
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

This gives something similar to but more complex than the accepted answer. I'm curious if there is any guidance on how to do positioning to properly align the nodes with respect to each other (or if there is an "auto positioning" library for nodes).

Answer 1

As a starting point, you could use:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}

\usetikzlibrary{positioning}

\begin{document}\small

\begin{tikzpicture}[node distance=20mm,every node/.style={rectangle,minimum height=10mm,text width=17mm,align=center,rounded corners=1mm,fill=green!50!black,draw=black}]

\node at (0,0)           (ko) {Kowalski};
\node[above of=ko,node distance=40mm]
                         (le) {Leibniz};
\node[above of=le,xshift=10mm] (ar) {Aristotle};
\node[left of=ar]        (ch) {Chrisyppus};

\node[right of=ko]       (co) {Colmerauer};
\node[above of=co]       (po) {Post};

\node[left of=ko]        (mc) {McCarthy};
\node[above of=mc]       (ta) {Tarski};
\node[left of=mc]        (mi) {Minski};
\node[left of=ta,node distance=30mm]  
                         (fr) {Frege};
\node[above of=fr]       (bo) {Boole};

\node[below of=co,xshift=-5mm,fill=blue!75!cyan] 
                         (pr) {Prolog};
\node[below of=pr]       (cl) {Clark};

\node[below of=mc,xshift=12mm] 
                         (mo) {Moore};
\node[below of=mc,xshift=-12mm]
                         (re) {Reiter};
\node[left of=re]
                         (do) {McDermott Doyle};
\node[below of=mc,node distance=40mm]
                         (ge) {Gelfond Lifschitz};
\node[below of=ge,fill=blue!75!cyan]
                         (ap) {A-Prolog};

\foreach \x/\y in {ar/le,ch/le,le/ko,po/ko,po/co,bo/fr,fr/ta,ta/mi,ta/mc,ta/ko,mc/do,mc/re,mc/mo,mc/ge,mo/ge,ko/pr,co/pr,pr/cl,pr/ge,cl/ge,ge/ap}
    \draw[-stealth,shorten >=1mm] (\x) -- (\y);

\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}