Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz

Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz
Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz (1904)
Born	(1863-05-01)1 May 1863 Ghent, Belgium
Died	5 May 1933(1933-05-05) (aged 70) Berlin, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Writer

Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz (1 May 1863, in Ghent – 5 May 1933, in Berlin), was a German lawyer, heraldist and genealogist who popularized a genealogical numbering system of ancestors.

Stephan was the son of the prominent chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, descended from a Czech noble family from Bohemia, and his Belgian wife Stéphanie Drory.

In 1898, Kekulé von Stradonitz published his interpretation of Eytzinger's and Sosa's method in his Ahnentafel-Atlas. Ahnentafeln zu 32 Ahnen der Regenten Europas und ihrer Gemahlinnen, Berlin: J. A. Stargardt, 1898–1904, containing 79 charts of the sovereigns of Europe and their wives. This method became the most common method of numbering ancestors and is known as the Sosa–Stradonitz Method or Ahnentafel.

• The Sosa–Stradonitz System or Ahnentafel Numbering System