Ernest William Titterton
Titterton, Ernest William (1916-1990) was a British atomic physicist and professor of nuclear physics who was well known for his sometimes controversial views on the topic of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. During World War II (1939–1945), he was a member of the British atomic bomb missions developing nuclear weapons at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and was a senior member of the timing group at the test of the first atomic bomb.
Titterton was born in 1916 in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. He studied physics and mathematics at Birmingham University, graduating with a B.Sc. pass degree in 1936. He received his M.Sc. degree in 1938, then taught physics on a grammar-school level until 1939. He returned to Birmingham University as a member of a British Admiralty research team developing high-power pulsed radiation devices that could obtain higher resolution in the detection of aircraft by radar. Titterton developed a fast-pulsing, triggered spark-gap modulator that was small enough to put in aircraft. He was allowed to submit this top-secret work for his doctoral thesis and was awarded a Ph.D. degree in 1941.
In 1939, Titterton used his spark-gap modulator to track neutrons after fission to determine the feasibility of developing a nuclear bomb. In 1940, Titterton went to Los Alamos, New Mexico, as part of a small contingent of British scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. He designed the complex timing system that would initiate the explosions that would detonate the bomb, and in July 1945 he triggered the first nuclear test explosion at Alamogordo, in the New Mexican desert.
From 1947 to 1950, he headed a research team at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell, England. There, he investigated ternary fission and the disintegration of highly excited light nuclei into one or more particles. In 1950, he became professor of nuclear physics at the Australian National University, Canberra; dean of its Research School of Physical Sciences (1966–1968); and director (1968–1973). He was president of the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (1973–1974). He was knighted in 1970.