Chemical Genealogy

Petr Munk
Czechoslovak Acad. Sci., 1960
UT: 1970-
Emeritus

Blahoslav Sedlacek (1)
Czechoslovak Acad. Sci.

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Otto Wichterle
Prague, 1935

Emil Votocek
Tech. Univ. Prague, 1900

Bohuslav Rayman (2)
Prague Polytechnic, 1877

F. August Kekulé (3)
Giessen, 1852

Heinrich Will
Giessen, 1839

Justus von Liebig
Erlangen, 1822

Dr. Munk comments: "The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia is to blame [for the confusion of this line]. During the war the Czech universities were closed. After the war people who were qualified and who would study toward higher degrees during the war were allowed to write and defend their dissertations without having any scientific supervisor. This was the case (I believe) of one Lubos Matousek. After that he became a supervisor of several graduate students. This was happening within the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences; the final professional title was C.Sc. (candidate of science), which was the Czechoslovak (Soviet-like) equivalent of Ph.D. One of Matousek's students was Blahoslav Sedlacek, who later became my supervisor. (I am not 100% sure about this scenario, maybe Sedlacek graduated without any supervisor as well.) When some 25 years ago this genealogy was compiled for the first time, I tried to complete the scheme by making a connection between Sedlacek and Wichterle. In fact, Sedlacek got his Ph.D. (C.Sc.) before he started working with Wichterle. At the time when I started my graduate studies, Wichterle became the director of the newly founded Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry and Sedlacek was one of his leading coworkers. Thus my graduate studies were under the direct supervision of Sedlacek, while Wichterle was the head of the whole Institute." (E-mail communication, Dec. 1998)

Rayman also studied with Vojtech Safarik (Berlin/Göttingen, 1858), who in turn studied with Wöhler. (cf Mainz)