Anthony Michaelis

Devoted chronicler of all aspects of science
It was in Heidelberg, where he has died aged 91, that the journalist Anthony Michaelis wrote his astonishing anthology of stories on science, The Scientific Temper (2001). Its 4,000 entries cover just about every 20th-century scientific event, while its 950 indexed list of names does an equivalent job for those involved. If ever a man blended his life with science in all its aspects, that individual was Michaelis, a man who saw science as humanity's greatest source for good.

He was a scientist in the 19th-century understanding of that term, collecting old scientific instruments (such as astrolabes), medals struck in honour of scientific achievements, banknotes commemorating scientific heroes or made in novel fashion, like plastic polymer notes - first produced in Australia - or AD1375 Chinese notes. Having gathered 1,300 notes of scientific relevance, he handed them all to a German museum.

Alone of the British science writers - he was the Daily Telegraph's science correspondent from 1969 to 1973 - he would always offer dinner to the new science attaches of foreign embassies, particularly those from Germany. The diplomats were delighted to learn of such an intermediary to Britain's scientists, and Michaelis was delighted to make another contact. Following the Telegraph, he became founder and editor of the Interdisciplinary Science Reviews quarterly. It promoted his edict that humankind's acquisition of knowledge has outdistanced its wisdom, and its editorial board was a Who's Who of famous names in science.

The son of a doctor, he was born Kurt Otto Adolf Michaelis in Berlin and educated in Germany. With three Jewish grandparents and therefore little chance in Hitler's Germany of the scientific teaching that he craved, in 1933 he was dispatched by his father to England, where he became Anthony Rowlands Michaelis. This 17-year-old, with only schoolboy English, managed to get into Imperial College London, to study aeronautical engineering with a large dose of chemistry.

Shortly before the second world war, his by then widowed father joined him. Michaelis junior volunteered for military duty, but in May 1940 was interned as an enemy alien, and in July was despatched to Canada in an overcrowded tramp steamer, having sent a farewell note to his father. Simultaneously, another such ship, the Arandora Star, was torpedoed in the Irish Sea and lost with all hands. Michaelis senior assumed his only son had perished, and took his own life. Over in Quebec, Michaelis was casually informed of his father's death and assumed some sudden illness had assaulted him.

The assortment of individuals compressed into Canadian huts included Klaus Fuchs, Max Perutz, Hermann Bondi and Tommy Gold. Lasting friendships were formed, all valuable to Michaelis. Eventually, alien exiles were permitted to return, and in December 1940 he sailed to Britain, where he was given a job working on aviation fuel. The stateless scientist switched to the Auxiliary Fire Service, where assistance to the war effort was more obvious.

Marriage and a postwar move to Australia led to an involvement with scientific filming, and his first book, Research Films (1956). On his eventual return to Britain, he edited the scientific magazine Discovery, and then joined the Telegraph.

Together with his longtime partner, art gallery director Stefanie Maison, he retired to Germany and set about the congenial task of compiling The Scientific Temper. He is survived by Stefanie, two daughters from his marriage, which had ended in divorce, and four grandchildren.

· Anthony Rowlands Michaelis (Kurt Otto Adolf Michaelis), science writer, born August 22 1916; died October 18 2007