Alexander F. Wells
Alexander Frank Wells (1912 – 1994), or A. F. Wells, was a British chemist and crystallographer. He is known for his work on structural inorganic chemistry, which includes the description and classification of structural motifs, such as the polyhedral coordination environments, in crystals obtained from X-ray crystallography. His work is summarized in a classic reference book, "Structural inorganic chemistry", first appeared in 1945 and has since gone through five editions. Wells studied at University of Oxford and University of Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD in X-ray crystallography in 1937. He worked as research scientist at  Cambridge from 1937 to 1940 and at University of Birmingham from 1940 till 1944. He moved to the industry afterwards, working as a senior research associate at Imperial Chemical Industries from 1944 to 1968. He then moved back to academia and became a Professor of Chemistry at University of Connecticut in the USA from 1968 until his retirement in 1980.