Abstract Academic genealogy hierarchizes formal advisor-advisee relationships in networks of students and their advisors providing room for a series of analyzes, such as identifying who are the most influential academics, in what areas they act, and what is the relationship between these areas. This work aims to build and analyze the academic genealogy of the National School of Public Health Sergio Arouca, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. Therefore, this work made use of the PhD mentoring records of the library of this institution and of the researchers’ curriculum from Lattes Platform. The results showed that, in the analyzed institution, academic knowledge has multiple origins, which dated to the first half of the twentieth century, and that the trajectory of knowledge in Public Health is multidisciplinary. Currently, the academic knowledge in the institution has the mark of the urgency of the environment, meaning that it is built to obtain answers about and to the reality of health in the Brazilian context.