Lord Penney
Penney, Lord (1909-1991) led Britain in its acquisition, testing, and regulation of atomic weapons. He helped direct the testing of Britain's first atomic bomb.
William George Penney was born June 24, 1909, on Gibraltar. At age 18, Penney won a scholarship to the Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London where he received a B.S. degree in 1929 and a Ph.D. degree in 1931. He studed physics at the University of Wisconsin, specializing in paramagnetism, the study of a class of substances whose magnetization is parallel to the lines of force in a magnetic field and proportional to the intensity of the magnetic field. He received a Ph.D. degree in 1935 from Trinity College, Cambridge University for his paper, “The Theory of Molecular Structure.” That year, he also received a doctor of science from the University of London.
As Allied leaders sought to end World War II (1939–1945), Penney led a team of British scientists to the United States to help develop the world's first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He witnessed the first atomic bomb explosion on July 16, 1945, at an area now called the White Sands Missile Range in the desert of southern New Mexico.
Penney flew with the American scientific team to the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean to help assemble the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. He also flew in an observation plane for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.
In 1946, he attended the two atomic bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Also in 1946, Britain put Penney in charge of its atomic weapons development and also appointed him to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. He warned of the danger of uncontrolled development of atomic energy in the world, saying that world leaders had to “find the solution or perish.”
On Oct. 3, 1952, Penney directed the explosion of Britain's first atomic weapon in the Monte Bello Islands, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the northwest coast of Western Australia.
Penney became a Knight Commander of the British Empire, a fellow of the Royal Society, and received the United States Medal of Freedom.