Alfred Walter Stewart (5 September 1880 – 1 July 1947) was a British chemist and part-time novelist who wrote seventeen
detective novels
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an criminal investigation, investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around ...
and a pioneering
science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
work between 1923 and 1947 under the pseudonym of JJ Connington. He created several fictional detectives, including Superintendent Ross and Chief Constable
Sir Clinton Driffield.
Biography
Born in
Glasgow
Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...
in 1880, Stewart was the youngest of three sons of the Reverend Dr. Stewart, Clerk to the University Senate and Professor of Divinity. After attending
Glasgow High School he entered
Glasgow University, graduating 1902, taking chemistry as his major. His outstanding performance earned him the Mackay-Smith scholarship.
After spending a year in
Marburg engaging in research under
Theodor Zincke
Ernst Carl Theodor Zincke (19 May 1843 – 17 March 1928) was a German chemist and the academic adviser of Otto Hahn.
Life
Theodor Zincke was born in Uelzen on 19 May 1843. He became a pharmacist and graduated in Göttingen with his Staatsexamen ...
, he was elected to an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship and then in 1903 entered
University College, London. Here he began independent research. His work, which formed part of his
thesis
A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...
, gained him a
DSc DSC or Dsc may refer to:
Education
* Doctor of Science (D.Sc.)
* District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India
* Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine
Educational institutions
* Dyal Sin ...
degree from Glasgow University in 1907 and he was soon elected to a Carnegie Research Fellowship (1905–1908).
He decided to pursue an academic career and in 1908 wrote ''Recent Advances in Organic Chemistry'' which proved to be a popular textbook whose success encouraged him to write a companion volume on Inorganic and Physical Chemistry in 1909.
In 1909 Stewart was appointed to a lectureship in organic chemistry at
Queen's University, Belfast and in 1914 was appointed Lecturer in Physical Chemistry and Radioactivity at the University of Glasgow. During
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
he worked for the Admiralty. In 1918 he drew attention to the result of a
beta particle
A beta particle, also called beta ray or beta radiation (symbol β), is a high-energy, high-speed electron or positron emitted by the radioactive decay of an atomic nucleus, known as beta decay. There are two forms of beta decay, β− decay and Π...
change in a radioactive element and suggested the term ''isobar'' as complementary to ''
isotope
Isotopes are distinct nuclear species (or ''nuclides'') of the same chemical element. They have the same atomic number (number of protons in their Atomic nucleus, nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemica ...
''.
He retired from his academic work in 1944 following recurrent heart problems.
Stewart is now chiefly remembered for his first novel, ''Nordenholt's Million'' (1923), an early
ecocatastrophe disaster novel in which
denitrifying bacteria inimical to plant growth run amok and destroy world agriculture. The eponymous plutocrat Nordenholt constructs a refuge for the chosen few in Scotland, fortifying the
Clyde valley. The novel is similar in spirit to such disaster stories as
Philip Wylie
Philip Gordon Wylie (May 12, 1902 – October 25, 1971) was an American writer of works ranging from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and satire to ecology and the threat of nuclear holocaust.
Early life and career
Born in Bever ...
and
Edwin Balmer's ''
When Worlds Collide'' (1933) and anticipates the theme of
John Christopher's ''
The Death of Grass'' (1956).
Dorothy L. Sayers paid tribute to Stewart's ''
The Two Tickets Puzzle'' in her ''
The Five Red Herrings''. She gave him full credit and built on one of his ideas for part of the solution of her mystery.
John Dickson Carr was also an admirer of Stewart's and Carr's first novel in 1930 mentioned two of Stewart's earlier novels with admiration.
Bibliography
Sir Clinton Driffield novels
* ''
Murder in the Maze'', 1927
* ''
Tragedy at Ravensthorpe'', 1927
* ''
Mystery at Lynden Sands'', 1928
* ''
The Case with Nine Solutions'', 1928
* ''
Nemesis at Raynham Parva'', 1929 ( ''Grim Vengeance'')
* ''
The Boathouse Riddle'', 1931
* ''
The Sweepstake Murders'', 1931
* ''
The Castleford Conundrum'', 1932
* ''
The Ha-Ha Case'', 1934 (a.k.a. ''The Brandon Case'')
* ''
In Whose Dim Shadow'', 1935 (a.k.a. ''The Tau Cross Mystery'')
* ''
A Minor Operation'', 1937
* ''
Truth Comes Limping'', 1938
* ''
For Murder Will Speak'', 1938 (a.k.a. ''Murder Will Speak'')
* ''
The Twenty-One Clues'', 1941
* ''
No Past Is Dead'', 1942
* ''
Jack-in-the-Box'', 1944
* ''
Common Sense Is All You Need'', 1947
Other novels
* ''Nordenholt's Million'', London, Bombay, Sydney:
Constable & Co. Ltd., 1923; repr. New York: Dover Publications, 2016
* ''Almighty Gold'', 1924
* ''
Death at Swaythling Court'', 1926
* ''
The Dangerfield Talisman'', 1926
* ''
The Eye in the Museum'', 1929
* ''
The Two Tickets Puzzle'', 1930 (a.k.a. ''The Two Ticket Puzzle'')
* ''
Tom Tiddler's Island'', 1933 (a.k.a. ''Gold Brick Island'')
* ''
The Counsellor'', 1939
* ''
The Four Defences'', 1940
Short stories
* "After Death the Doctor", (London) Daily News, 25 to 29 January 1934
* "Before Insulin", 1937
Nonfiction
* ''Stereochemistry'', 1907
* ''Recent Advances in Organic Chemistry'', 1908
* ''Inorganic and Physical Chemistry'', 1909
* ''Some Physico-chemical Themes'', 1922
* ''Alias J. J. Connington'', 1947 (repr. 2015)
References
External links
*
*
*
*
Obituary of Alfred Walter Stewart (PDF)Norbert Nail: Genialer Chemiker und Meister des Detektivromans. Mit mathematischer Logik auf Mörderjagd - Das biografische Rätsel rund um die Philipps-Universität, in: Marburger UniJournal Nr. 56 (2018), p. 40
Nr. 57 (2018/19), p. 32
Norbert Nail: 100 Jahre J. J. Conningtons "Nordenholt's Million"
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stewart, Alfred Walter
1880 births
1947 deaths
Writers from Glasgow
Writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction
Scottish novelists
Scottish chemists
Scottish crime fiction writers
Alumni of the University of Glasgow
Academics of Queen's University Belfast
Academics of the University of Glasgow
Scottish science fiction writers
20th-century Scottish novelists
Scottish male novelists
Members of the Detection Club
20th-century British male writers