David Miller
History & Archives Committee, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.98.37

As trailed last year in Physiology News, the History & Archives Committee has initiated a Physiology Family Tree at the website academictree.org. Many will know that several academic disciplines already have trees on this website, many with roots and branches overlapping with Physiology, e.g. Neuroscience. The near-100 submissions from members received at Physiology 2014 have been entered on the website and we encourage members to now visit to add their own details. We had asked contributors at Physiology 2014, as a minimum: ‘Who was your PhD supervisor? Who was their supervisor?’ It was a surprise (to me) just how many colleagues were not immediately able to answer the second question. Apart from satisfying idle curiosity, these lineages certainly provide valuable insights into the spread of ideas and techniques through the linkages revealed. Below is just one version showing Andrew Huxley’s lineage.

A closer look at this version of Huxley’s tree (and the trees of others) shows that many have entered their details, or have been submitted by others, as ‘children’, even though they were actually collaborators. As a freely accessible and editable resource, Academictree.org has no firmly applied rules and the ‘sociology’ of this widespread approach is fascinating in itself.

As you explore the website, you will see that the information can be displayed in several different ways. Collaborations can be logged, as well as strict ‘children and parent’ relationships, together with photos, biographical details and links. In many cases, even the ‘child-parent’ relationship is complicated as a result of having multiple doctoral supervisors, or no conventional ‘parents’ for those who didn’t take the now conventional PhD/DPhil path. Apart from the basic tree display, you can explore the Distance facility. By setting various criteria, this shows you who forms your links to anybody you specify in the tree, or even the distance to your nearest Nobel Prize winner.

The website is open-access and we warmly encourage you to register. Do ensure that you are working within the Physiology tree when you make new entries or edit existing ones. If you search for individuals, make sure you chose the ‘all trees’ option to avoid duplications. If you find somebody from your lineage within another tree, there are options to add them to Physiology, or from Physiology to another tree too; in that way, the roots and branches rapidly fill with little effort.

At this early stage we will be able to help with errors you might detect and to advise on problems, however the best idea is simply to explore academictree/physiology for yourself and watch the branches grow. We hope you will find this resource interesting, informative and entertaining.