Jonathan Clayden: ‘I like to feel that we have set the curriculum rather than followed the curriculum’
By 
Mason Wakley2026-07-01T06:05:00
The co-author of the much-loved Organic Chemistry shares his insights on creating a chemistry textbook
How did you get involved in writing textbooks?
Stuart Warren, who was my PhD supervisor, was approached by Michael Rodgers, a commissioning editor at Oxford University Press, to write a textbook on organic chemistry.
Stuart said to Rodgers ‘No, I haven’t got time by myself, but I could do it if I brought on a team of co-authors.’ And so that’s how I got involved. We started writing Organic Chemistry in 1996 and the first edition was published in 2001.