Gordon Aylward graduated on 20 May 1952 with a BSc (Honours) in Applied Chemistry from the then-new University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Later he received a MSc from the same university, and continued to teach Analytical Chemistry for 13 years there.. During that period he organized the Approach to Chemistry summer schools, together with his co-teacher dr Tristan Findlay. To support the course, they wrote the book SI Chemical Data as the textbook.

Later Aylward joined Macquarie University as Associate Professor and worked from 1970 till his retirement in 2005 in developing countries as a Science Education consultant for UNESCO, then for the World Bank and finally as a free-lance Senior Science Education Advisor.

Together with Tristan Findlay, in 1965 Aylward wrote SI Chemical Data, a supplementary text for chemistry students in undergraduate courses, and for in high school subjects specialising in chemistry.

1. 1965: first edition
2. second edition
3. third edition
4. 1998: fourth edition
5. 2002: fifth edition