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Chemical Genealogy


Welcome to the Chemical Genealogy Database Hompage.

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A professional genealogy (as opposed to a family genealogy) traces a person's intellectual line of descent via one's PhD advisor or mentor for one's highest non-honorary degree.

The starting points for this Database are usually chemists, so that this is a Chemical genealogy database; some scientists from other disciplines are included as the lines are traced.

The Database contains information about each person's birthdate, deathdate, highest non-honorary degree, degree date, degree place, degree advisor, scientific accomplishments, and references from which the information was compiled.

To begin searching the Database, click one of the alphabetic entry points that appear in the left navigation area.

For example, suppose you wanted information about the chemist G. N. Lewis. By clicking on the L button in the left-hand frame, and then scrolling down to Lewis, Gilbert Newton, you will see the following information.


TREE NAME STUDENT(S) INFLUENCE ON
Lewis, Gilbert Newton Eastman
Freed, S
Mayer, JR
Olson
Rollefson
McClure

In the alphabetized list, each NAME links to a database entry, while the TREE symbol (if present) links to a descent tree (chemical genealogy tree). STUDENT(S) indicate links to the various students of the NAMEd person that are in this Database, and INFLUENCE ON links to those in this Database who were strongly influenced by the NAMED person.

Searching backward in time, from student to teacher, can be done within each database entry by clicking on the name of the teacher. Searching forward in time, from teacher to student, must be done with the help of the alphabetized list.

Hints about how to research your own chemical genealogy (especially for individuals not in this Database) and details about how the Database was constructed are given in the Introduction.

 

Large charts showing groups of faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Chemistry are also available:

 

 

Some final notes:

  1. As stated in the Introduction, there are as many ways to construct intellectual genealogies as there are those who construct them. We present here a consistent set of data, but we acknowledge that not everyone will agree with our choices.

  2. If you have any additional biographical data or sources that you would like to share with us, please send them to mainz [at] illinois [dot] edu.

  3. If you are interested in having a personalized genealogy for yourself or others, these are available for a small fee. See Custom Genealogies for details.