tedder became an authority on a number of topics within the field of chemistry, and was the author or co-author of some 200 technical essays and several textbooks. one of his areas of expertise concerned organofluorine chemistry, and he pioneered the use of gas-liquid chromatography at sheffield university in the 1950s. he composed a number of technical papers on the reactivity of orthoquinones. he developed a two-stage ion-beam spectrometer. he was also recognised by his peers as an important authority in free radical chemistry.