Alexander F. Wells (1912-1994)

Alexander F. Wells

A. F. Wells, known to his close friends as "Jumbo", Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT, and one of the leading figures in structural inorganic chemistry, died on November 28, 1994.

He was born in London, England and graduated from Oxford University with BS and MA degrees in 1934 and 1937, respectively. He completed his PhD in 1939 at Cambridge University. Between 1940 and 1943 he conducted luminescence research at Birmingham University. He then accepted a position at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and later became a director of the crystallographic lab in the Dyestuffs Division. In 1956 he was awarded the DSc degree by Cambridge University for his contributions to the field of structural chemistry. In 1968 he accepted the position of full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Connecticut and, for over a decade, he dedicated himself to teaching graduate students and to technical writing until his retirement.

In 1985, Wells returned to England to be with his children and grandchildren. In 1986 he suffered a debilitating stroke from which he did not recover.

Wells wrote five editions of the "classic" text Structural Inorganic Chemistry (1382 pages and scores of highly illustrative three-dimensional structural drawings, personally prepared by him), revising the text every ten years until 1985. Each edition was typed on the "Corona" typewriter he first used on his PhD thesis in 1937. Wells authored 4 other books, 11 review chapters and 55 journal articles on crystallography, chemistry, and education. Most of his single author publications on structures and nets appeared in Acta Crystallographica. He was most proud of those publications dealing with structural principles as applied to chemistry that appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education, Chemistry, and the Journal of Solid State Chemistry.

He was an accomplished pianist. His genius was known to only a few friends who had a chance to meet him and work with him.