Academic Genealogy of Chemistry Faculty

• All active and retired/Emeritus faculty
• All deceased faculty who were active, retired, or Emeritus at the time of their death
• Selected departed faculty, mainly those who were in the department for eight years or longer.

Some of the most famous names in the history of chemistry appear in the scientific ancestry of UT's faculty. Bunsen, Baeyer, Berzelius, Liebig, Rouelle, Wöhler, Ostwald, Kekulé, and Fresenius are among the founding fathers of modern chemistry. Important late-19th and early-20th Century chemists, both European and American, are also here: Cooke, Richards, Remsen, Fischer, Gomberg, Lewis, Pauling, Seaborg, and Conant.

Academic lineage is open to interpretation. Before the 20th century, scientists often did not have formal academic advisers as they do today. Several mentors may have been influential in directing a particular chemist's early career and course of study. Some chemists, such as Lavoisier, were extremely influential, but never formally instructed students. In selecting the primary mentor, emphasis has been given to overall influence and to traditional lineage interpretations. Where useful we have included lines to multiple mentors and notes explaining their relationships.

• Most UT faculty trace back to the French apothecary Guillaume-François Rouelle, who founded, along with Lavoisier, the French school of chemistry; his descendants were Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, and later Liebig, Bunsen, and Cooke.
• About thirty faculty descend from Swedish chemist Torbern O. Bergman, whose direct descendants were Afzelius, Berzelius, and Wöhler.
• A few faculty descend from a line of famous Cambridge crystallographers and physicists, including J.J. Thomson, James Chadwick, William H. Bragg, and Ernest Rutherford.
• It is a sign of chemistry's increasing interdisciplinarity that a number of recently appointed faculty members do not trace back to the main chemistry lineages; they come from diverse fields such as physics, biology, and computer science.

This site is organized into two sections. The Trees section provides chart images of the complex lineages of major "families" of UT chemists who are linked by a common ancestor. The Individual Genealogy section provides a separate lineage for each faculty member.