The following is my scientific genealogy -- that is, I traced who my doctoral advisor's doctoral advisor was, who his advisor was, etc. I have put the table in chronological order from Rutherford down to myself. It is interesting to note that from Carl Woese onward, we are evolutionary biologists. I'm not sure that Rutherford, with his sneering "stamp collecting" view of biology, would have approved. Then again, Carl certainly helped push evolutionary studies into a more rigorous (and molecular) framework, so maybe he would have.

Name	Birth - Death	Significant Contribution to Science
Ernest Rutherford	1871 - 1937	Demonstrated that radioactivity was the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. Nobel Prize (Chemistry) 1908.
James Chadwick	1891 - 1974	Discoverer of the Neutron. Nobel Prize (Physics) 1935.
Ernest Pollard	1906 - 1997	Contributed to the development of microwave radar at MIT during World War II. Founded biophysics department at Yale in 1955.
Carl Woese	1928 - 2012	Discoverer of the Archaea. Crafoord Prize (Biosciences) 2003.
Mitch Sogin	1946 (*) -	Contributed to our understanding of early eukaryotic evolution.
Gary Olsen	1953 (*) -	Contributed to our understanding of archaeal genomics, phylogeny, and biochemistry.
Jonathan Badger	1970 -	Still working on it. Genomic analysis seems to be the primary focus.

(*) Actual birth year not known, but estimated value computed from CV, assuming an age of 22 for completion of undergraduate degree.

Fun Facts about members of the genealogy:

• Ernest Rutherford lived in Montreal from 1898 to 1907. By an amazing coincidence, Jonathan Badger lived in Montreal from 2001 to 2003.
• James Chadwick initially wanted to study mathematics as an undergraduate, but got in the wrong registration line (the line for physics) by mistake.
• Ernest Pollard wrote a science fiction novel, The Cataclysm, published in 1988.
• The Oxford English Dictionary cites Carl Woese for the entry on "promoter" (in its molecular biological context).