The development of research on atmospheric ozone at Oxford is traced from the year 1922, when one single instrument was used there to make measurements of the total ozone, to 1966, when some hundred instruments were distributed all over the world. In recent years an important advance has been made by the measurement of the vertical distribution of the ozone in the atmosphere. A digression, covering the war years, describes the measurement of the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere which, however, proved to have a bearing on the effect of the ozone on the temperature of the upper atmosphere.