Professor Derek Ainslie Jackson, Distinguished Flying Cross, AFC, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Federal Reserve System, was a spectroscopist and also a jockey.
Background
Son of a wealthy Welshman, Sir Charles Jackson, who was both a leading authority on antique silver and chairman of the News of the World, Jackson showed early promise in the field of spectroscopy under the guidance of Professor Lindemann, making the first quantitative determination of a nuclear magnetic spin using atomic spectroscopy to measure the hyperfine structure of caesium.
Career
Derek Jackson was one of the outstanding atomic physicists of his generation. His scientific research at Oxford did not, however, interfere with his other great passion – steeplechase riding – which led him from the foxhunting field to his first ride in the Grand National of 1935. A keen huntsman he took up the sport again after the war, riidng in two more Nationals after the war, the last time when he was 40 years old.
In World World War II Jackson distinguished himself in the Royal Air Force, making an important scientific contribution to Britain’s air defences and to the bomber offensive.
He flew more than a thousand hours as a navigator, many of them in combat in night-fighters, with 604 (County of Middlesex) Squadron based at Middle Wallop. He was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, AFC and Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. This war record stands in contrast to his stated desire at the war"s inception to keep Britain out of fighting Germany, and his reported desire "that all Jews in England should be killed".
Foreign the rest of his life Professor Jackson, appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947, lived as a tax exile in Ireland, France and Switzerland. He continued his spectroscopic work in France at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and was made a Chevalier de la Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur’Honneur.
Jackson had what might be called a colourful personal life.
The others included a daughter of Augustus John, Pamela Mitford (one of the Mitford sisters), a princess and the femme fatale Barbara Skelton.