Hi my real name is Jason and welcome to my (very occasional) blog. To give you an idea of my age, let’s just say that I was born in the year that Marty McFly was trying to return to in Back To The Future. That was a good year. Hopefully you are enjoying reading my posts as much as I enjoy writing them.

I have worked for over a decade now at the Royal Society of Chemistry in Publishing. I’ve worked on over 40 different journals and been the handling editor for over 10,000 submissions. I am currently the Associate Editorial Manager of the General Chemistry & Frontiers portfolio, which is responsible for the world famous ChemComm. In the before times, I completed a postdoctoral position based in the great capital of London. Originally hailing from the south coast of England in a little town called Worthing (that place from “The Importance of Being Earnest”), I studied chemistry at the University of Sussex for a long old time where I became part of the furniture. I’ve subsequently become part of the RSC’s furniture. I am Furniture Man. Anyway, my favourite area of chemistry and where my expertise lies is photochemistry (i.e. using light to perform chemical reactions).

I’ve been blogging for a while (if you can call the very occasional post “blogging”), but have always loved talking about the subject of chemistry, science and my other super geeky past times. Many of my days have been spent making up my own science fiction and fantasy universes inside the recesses of my brain and aspire to publish them all some day when they happen to finally splurge out onto the page. In 2018, I became Vegan after a lifetime of meat eating. That’s just a random fact. Enjoy it.

My claim to fame is that I used to curate #RealTimeChem on the site formerly known as Twitter (now X). It was kind of a thing. It used to have what I liked to call a “brigade”. Sadly, all good things must come to an end and after 12 years #RealTimeChem has left the site. You can still find all the old content by going to X (@RealTimeChem) though. The project has now moved over to Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/realtimechem.bsky.social) where you should start to find a more active community in 2025.

Final point, so what is up with the name of this blog I hear somebody ask? The name is actually a tribute to one of my favourite musicians, Elton John. He created an album entitled “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” in 1975, where Elton was (of course) Captain Fantastic and his writing partner Bernie Taupin was the Brown Dirt Cowboy. In my case, it fits my personality, which is split between my geek persona that loves sci-fi, fantasy, and once loved to dress up as the Doctor from Doctor Who (Doctor Galactic) and the logical, serious-faced, and science-loving researcher (The Lab Coat Cowboy).

Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. I hope you’ll read something.

-Doctor Galactic-