Heather Elliott was married Saturday in Atlanta to Stuart Rachels. Elizabeth Ressler-Craig, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, officiated at the Georgia TechAlumni House.

The bride, 41, and the bridegroom, 40, are both professors at the University of Alabama; she is an assistant professor at the School of Law and he is an associate professor of philosophy.

Ms. Elliott is keeping her name. From 2001 to 2002, she was a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court. She graduated from Duke and received a Master of Philosophy degree in political science from Yale, and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

She is the daughter of Luanne H. Elliott and R. Randolph Elliott of Beaufort, S.C. Her father retired as a systems engineer from I.B.M. in Atlanta. Her mother retired as a research microbiologist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where she studied Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers.

Mr. Rachels graduated summa cum laude from Emory University. He also graduated from Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and. received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Syracuse.

In 1981, at age 11, Mr. Rachels became the youngest American chess master, a record he held until 1994. In 1989, he was the co-champion of the United States Chess Championship, held in Long Beach, Calif.

He is a son of Carol Rachels of Birmingham, Ala., and the late James Rachels. His father, a medical ethicist and philosopher, was a professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He was the author of five books and the editor of seven others, and the writer of many influential works on euthanasia. His mother is retired from Liberty National Life Insurance Company in Birmingham, where she was an internal auditor.