John Stuart Anderson

John Stuart Anderson FRS, FAA, (9 January 1908 – 25 December 1990) was a British and Australian scientist who was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

He was born in Islington, London, the son of a Scottish cabinet-maker, and attended school in the area but learned most of his chemistry at the Islington Public Library. His tertiary education was at the Northern Polytechnic Institute, Imperial College and the Royal College of Science, all in London.

Anderson's most important research work was:

• on the application of Raman spectroscopy to valence problems
• accounting for the composition ranges of non-stoichiometric compounds by combining the ideas of Schottky and Wagner with those of Fowler and Lacher
• his use of field-emission and field ion microscopy to study surface reactions at the atomic level
• his use of the electron microscope to solve problems of reaction mechanisms in solid state chemistry
• on the conditions of equilibrium of 'non-stoichiometric' chemical compounds.

In addition he carried out practical investigations on the composition of minerals mined in Australia. He developed a love of the Australian bush and, with his family, a lifelong attachment to the country.

Anderson was co-author with Harry Julius Emeléus of the seminal textbook Modern Aspects of Inorganic Chemistry, first published in 1938, which went through numerous editions and translations for over thirty years.

John Stuart Anderson died from cancer in Canberra on Christmas Day, 1990.

In memory of John, the University of Melbourne created the JS Anderson Prize awarded to a promising research student in the area of Chemistry.