Jean Jones Author

Robert G.W. Anderson is an historian of science whose career was spent largely in museums: he was Director of the British Museum from 1992 to 2002, and previously, from 1985, of the National Museums of Scotland. He has been President of the British Society for the History of Science, is currently Chairman of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and is Vice-Chair of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia. He has long been interested in eighteenth-century chemistry: an early publication of his, The Playfair Collection, dealt with how Joseph Black and other professors of chemistry conducted their teaching at the University of Edinburgh. He is now Vice-President of Clare Hall, Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Jean Jones was born in the Scottish Borders, and lived most of her life in Edinburgh. Educated at school in St Andrews, and at the University of Oxford, LSE and Edinburgh, she was a professional editor and a successful painter. Her exceptionally wide scholarly interests ranged from literature and the arts to social history and the history of science. She devised and organised three thought-provoking exhibitions in the National Museums of Scotland in 1986, 1988 and 1991 which dealt with the Scottish Enlightenment, scientific revolutions, and Adam Smith. She published widely, most importantly on the Scottish geologist James Hutton, who was a lifelong friend of Joseph Black. Jean Jones died in 2009.