View source for Alfred Walter Stewart

{{Short description|British chemist and novelist (1880–1947)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2017}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2017}}

'''Alfred Walter Stewart''' (5 September 1880 – 1 July 1947) was a British chemist and part-time novelist who wrote seventeen [[detective novels]] and a pioneering [[science fiction]] 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]] 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 [[High School of Glasgow|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]], 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]], gained him a [[DSc]] 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]] he worked for the Admiralty. In 1918 he drew attention to the result of a [[beta particle]] change in a radioactive element and suggested the term ''isobar'' as complementary to ''[[isotope]]''.

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]] [[Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction|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 [[River Clyde|Clyde]] valley. The novel is similar in spirit to such disaster stories as [[Philip Wylie]] and [[Edwin Balmer]]'s ''[[When Worlds Collide]]'' (1933) and anticipates the theme of [[Samuel Youd|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<ref>Carr, John Dickson ''The Greatest Game in the World'', 1946</ref> and Carr's first novel in 1930 mentioned two of Stewart's earlier novels with admiration.

==Bibliography==

===Sir Clinton Driffield novels===
{{Further|Sir Clinton Driffield}}
* ''[[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 ({{aka}} ''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 (novel)|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 (novel)|The Counsellor]]'', 1939
* ''[[The Four Defences]]'', 1940

===Short stories===
* "After Death the Doctor", (London) Daily News, 25 to 29 January 1934
* "Before Insulin", 1937<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?1008156 |title="Publication: Before Insulin" |publisher=Internet Speculative Fiction Database |access-date=31 January 2025}}</ref>

===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==
<references/>

==External links==
* {{Gutenberg author | id=52959 | name=J. J. Connington}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/j-j-connington/}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Alfred Walter Stewart}}
* {{Librivox author|id=18369}}
*[http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayArticleForFree.cfm?doi=JR9480000394&JournalCode=JR Obituary of Alfred Walter Stewart (PDF)]
*[https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/universitaet/presse/uni-journal/journal/uj56_44s_web_01_a4.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
*[https://norbert-nail.de/nordenholt-million.pdf Norbert Nail: 100 Jahre J. J. Conningtons "Nordenholt's Million"]
* {{cite TIWW |article=Stewart, Alfred Walter |page=238 }}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stewart, Alfred Walter}}
[[Category:1880 births]]
[[Category:1947 deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Glasgow]]
[[Category:Writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction]]
[[Category:Scottish novelists]]
[[Category:Scottish chemists]]
[[Category:Scottish crime fiction writers]]
[[Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow]]
[[Category:Academics of Queen's University Belfast]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Glasgow]]
[[Category:Scottish science fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Scottish novelists]]
[[Category:Scottish male novelists]]
[[Category:Members of the Detection Club]]
[[Category:20th-century British male writers]]