Blue Cord

As I drove to class this morning, I had an idea for an interesting — though not particularly useful — Internet application. I don’t necessarily have the coding skills to write it right now, but I thought I would check to see if anyone knew whether such a program that was already written.

The program I have in mind is a piece of software that would track the genealogy of scholars.  It would allow us to build a “family tree” of scholars, tracing back someone’s academic lineage through his or her Doktorvater (or Doktormutter).  In turn, the Doktorvater’s Doktorvater could be traced. We could also include additional information such as other scholars at the same school with which the scholar took classes (Doktoronklen) and other scholars who were students there at the same time (Doktorgeschwistern).

I am not saying that we could find an Urscholar from whom we are all descended, but it would be interesting to see who was trained by whom and how influences run through academia. For instance, I am proud to trace my lineage through P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., who was trained by Frank Moore Cross, who studied with W.F. Albright.  I find it cool that W.F. Albright is my doctoral great-grandfather.  Of course, as Plutarch remarked, “It is indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.”

With all the social networking software out there, surely someone has done something like this.  It may just be a case where we need to tweak it for academia.  It anyone knows of something like this, I would appreciate it if you could let me know.