Professor Henry Wallace Wilson

Nuclear physicist Born: August 30, 1923; Died: November 7, 2014 HENRY Wilson, who has died aged 91, was a nuclear physicist and the first director of the Scottish Universities Research & Reactor Centre, which provided research and teaching facilities in a number of fields including reactor physics and nuclear engineering. Previously he was a senior principal scientific officer at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston during the height of the Cold War.

Born in Glasgow, his parents were Frank Binnington Wilson, an engineer, and his wife Janet, a senior clerical officer. The family had two younger sons, Robert Harman Wilson, who died following an accident when he was eight years old, and John Binnington Wilson.

Henry Wilson attended Allan Glen’s School, Glasgow, and then Glasgow University from 1942-1944 and 19461947. He graduated with a first-class honours BSc in natural philosophy in June 1947 (and was awarded the Sir Isaac Newton Medal in 1946). In 1953, he was awarded his PhD.

In the latter stages of the Second World War, he was employed as a member of the staff of the research department of Nobel’s Explosives Company at Ardeer and took part in a number of projects, including automating the process for testing fuses in detonators.

In 1947, he was appointed assistant lecturer (later lecturer) in the natural philosophy department and joined the research group headed by Dr (eventually Sir) Samuel Curran. In 1948 he took on the honours optics lectures and laboratory.

In 1951 he was awarded a Caird Travelling Fellowship plus a grant from Glas- gow University to allow him to travel to carry out research on Meson physics in the radiation laboratory of the University of California in Berkeley. This was a hugely stimulating visit, during which he met many of the best minds working in physics at the time, including several Nobel Laureates.

In 1955, he was appointed as principal scientific officer (becoming senior PSO in 1958) at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston – a busy time with the activities of the Cold War. During this appointment he spent three months at Maralinga in Australia during the 1956 nuclear testing programme determining the pattern of radiation released by nuclear explosions.

In 1960 he was a member of the fiveman British team at the US, UK and Russian nuclear test abolition conference in Geneva. This was an intensive working period – from early in the morning until late at night, seven days a week with only Sunday afternoons free. The scientists on both sides (West and East) got on well together, but eventually not-unexpected political differences got in the way of an innovative experimental programme of monitoring.

In 1962, Mr Wilson was appointed as the first director of the Scottish Universities Research & Reactor Centre, a post held until 1985. The unit provided research and teaching facilities in the fields of reactor physics, nuclear engineering, radiochemistry, radioisotope production and health physics. Realising the value of this central Scottish university research facility to linked universities, he was responsible for setting up departments in other fields of geological dating and radio carbon dating, both areas in which he had experience. He also supported the establishment of the nuclear medicine unit.

He was recognised by the Royal Society of Edinburgh as a Fellow in 1963, Member of Council 1966-69, 1976-79 and vice president from 1979-81.

During the 1960s he served as chairman of Busby & East Kilbride Railway Development Association, working with colleagues to preserve the East Kilbride to Glasgow train service, which was saved from closure.

Throughout his life he was passionate about mountaineering, sailing, flying (including Tiger Moths), industrial archaeology, canals, painting, choral singing, book-collecting and book-binding. A particular highlight in sailing was helping to crew, on the eve of his 70th birthday, a brig, The Eye of the Wind, up the United States east coast and across the Atlantic. He had a fantastic intellect and memory (from the age of two) and could converse knowledgeably on just about any subject. All his family and friends enjoyed his great sense of humour. He was a committed Christian and served as an elder and member of the choir at Greenbank Church, Clarkston, for over 46 years.

In 1955 he married Fiona Macpherson Martin in Carlisle and between them they raised three sons: Iain, an NHS consultant, Alastair, an oil industry accountant, and Alan, a professor of veterinary medicine. They survive him along with six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.