The genealogy of a chemistry department.

Abstract

The fascinating hobby de-scribed in this most interesting lecture led to the tracing of the scientific "ancestors" of the members of the staff of the Department of Chemistry at McMaster University.Every scientist has been directly influenced by a number of teachers, and each of these has been influenced by several teachers, and so on back. Thus it is an almost endless and impossible task to elaborate all one's "forebears," instructive and interesting though this would be. In the main, the procedure followed in this work has been to trace the "direct line of descent"; the immediate scientific ancestor of an individual is given as the person under whom the doctorate was obtained, or, in the absence of a doctorate, the person who is believed to have exerted the greatest scientific influence on the individual

The Threads of Inspiration To Study Science: More Than Academic Genealogies

“…Many individuals track their academic genealogies, write articles about significant chains of training, and develop resources to aid others seeking information; one place to start if you are interested is the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry Web site . Instructors use academic genealogies to bring the human side of science to their students and to motivate students to access primary sources in chemical literature. , Departments develop catchy graphics or Web sites − that may aid in engaging students. Scholars use academic genealogies for purposes ranging from discussing the changes wrought by interdisciplinary research to calculating metrics that identify key shapers of a discipline…”

“…10 Instructors use academic genealogies to bring the human side of science to their students and to motivate students to access primary sources in chemical literature. 11,12 Departments develop catchy graphics or Web sites 13−15 that may aid in engaging students. Scholars use academic genealogies for purposes ranging from discussing the changes wrought by interdisciplinary research 16 to calculating metrics that identify key shapers of a discipline.…”

Full Human Presence: A Guidepost to Mentoring Undergraduate Science Students

“…The idea of a professional identity based on one' s training is still valid today. Chemical genealogy is a real way that chemists record their historical connection via a lineage of Ph.D. mentors (Rocke and Ihde, 1979;McCarty, 1969;Bartow, 1939;Graham, 1948). In writing about the profound influences upon us of spending four years in a chemistry research group, a colleague and I eventually recognized that we also attribute a number of our teaching behaviors to lessons we learned from our graduate adviser (Coppola and Pearson, 1998).…”