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Academic Genealogy of Chemistry Faculty

Genealogy Trees       Individual Genealogies       Chart Legend       Sources

Libraries Web > Mallet Chemistry Library > Departmental History > Faculty Genealogy

Rouelle
Guillaume F. Rouelle
1703-1770

Bergman

Torbern O. Bergman
1735-1784

The Faculty Genealogy shows the academic lineage, based primarily on Ph.D. adviser, of faculty members of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. The chart includes:
  • All active and retired/Emeritus faculty
  • All deceased faculty who held appointments at the time of their death
  • Selected departed faculty, mainly those who were in the department for eight years or longer.
Of the 143 known faculty appointees since the department was founded in 1883, 111 are represented here. Short-term appointees not in the genealogy are listed here.

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. Twenty-six Nobel Prize winners are in the genealogy at present count. The flow of ideas from one generation to the next is dramatically evident when the chart is viewed as a whole.

Academic lineage can be 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.

Some academic genealogies extend back as far as the 15th Century, but we have decided to go no further than the 18th Century, when the arts of alchemy and apothecary were giving way to empirical scientific observation and experimentation.

  • 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.
  • Thirty faculty descend from Swedish chemist Torbern O. Bergman, whose direct descendants were Afzelius, Berzelius, and Wöhler.
  • Three faculty descend from a line of famous Cambridge mathemeticians and physicists, including J.J. Thomson, James Chadwick, William H. Bragg, and Ernest Rutherford. Dorothy Hodgkin was also in this line, which includes five Nobel Prizes.
  • 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.

LEGEND

Entries in the genealogy conform to one of these formats:

Currently appointed or retired/Emeritus UT professor:

John Q. Professor
PhD School, Year
UT: Year Started-
Retired and Emeritus professors are considered still appointed and have an open-ended date. Living Emeritus professors are noted.

Deceased UT professor:

I. M. Longgone
PhD School, Year
UT: Year Started-Death†
In the case of retired faculty who later died, the death date is always used, not the date of retirement.

Faculty who left UT for other positions have an end date in the box, but no † symbol.

arrow PhD adviser


• Studied with or influenced by

Nobel medal Nobel Prize Winner

SOURCES

The Chemical Genealogy is an ongoing project of the Mallet Chemistry Library. It was begun in the 1970s by Aubrey Skinner, longtime Mallet librarian. This is the "third edition" of the chart, building upon the 1991 and 1999 versions that preceded it. Many corrections, additions, and adjustments have been made. We strive for maximum accuracy, but errors of both fact and interpretation are the responsibility of the compilers. Please report any errors to the Chemistry Library for investigation.

Useful Web Resources:


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