| Description | Notebooks, papers and correspondence relating to some of David Edward Hugh Jones's major projects, including: his Daedalus column, his studies into arsenic in Napoleon's wallpaper, bicycle stability, perpetual motion, and his development of a chemical space garden. Remaining material includes that related to Jones's various television and radio projects with the BBC and YTV, his lecturing activities, a collection of slides and two scientific objects. |
| Arrangement | Arranged into seven thematic series:
1. Working papers of David Edward Hugh Jones's Daedalus column,
2. Project files of David Edward Hugh Jones,
3. Science communications material of David Edward Hugh Jones,
4. Paper drafts and publications by David Edward Hugh Jones,
5. Student notebooks and research papers of David Edward Hugh Jones,
6. Photographic material held by David Edward Hughes Jones,
7. Scientific objects held by David Edward Hughes Jones |
| AdminHistory | David Edward Hugh Jones (1938-2017) was an organic chemist by training. He studied first at Eltham College then at Imperial College London as an undergraduate research student and postdoctoral researcher. Following a year of teaching at Strathclyde University in 1967, he began work for ICI in Runcorn as a research spectroscopist, and in 1973 moved with a research fellowship to the chemistry department at Newcastle University. He also worked as a consultant to scientific media and industry throughout his career.
His alter ego, the fictional inventor for DREADCO (Daedalus Research Evaluation and Development Corp), specialised in stretching the limits of science. The 'Daedalus' column began in New Scientist in 1964 and transferred to Nature in the 1980s, and later to the Guardian. Jones produced almost 1,900 columns before Daedalus retired in 2002, and was the author of four books, The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (1982), The Further Inventions of Daedalus (1999), The Aha! Moment: A Scientist's Take on Creativity (2011) and Why Are We Conscious? (2017) |