Ernest Titterton

Ernest William Titterton, was born in Kettlebrook, Warwickshire, England, on 4 March 1916, the son of William Alfred and his wife Elizabeth . He had a younger brother, Maurice. He had a talent for music, singing with the choir and playing the organ at the Church of St Editha, Tamworth. While at the University of Birmingham, Titterton met Peggy Eileen Johnson, a laboratory assistant, who helped him build a prototype spark gap generator. They were married on 19 September 1942 at St John the Baptist in Hagley, Worcestershire. == Nuclear research ==

In 1943, a British mission was sent to the United States to assist the American Manhattan Project in developing atomic bombs. First to arrive at the Los Alamos Laboratory were Frisch and Titterton, on 13 December 1943. The two shared an office at first, but were soon working on different projects. Titterton worked in collaboration with the American physicist Boyce McDaniel in Robert R. Wilson's P-1 (Cyclotron) Group. Together, they searched for delays between nuclear fission and the emission of prompt neutrons. A sizeable delay could make a nuclear chain reaction impractical. pleasantly surprised and impressed Brigadier General Leslie Groves by congratulating him on the food and accommodation. Titterton played the grand piano at dances and recitals at the Fuller Lodge, often accompanied by Richard Feynman on the drums. With the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, known as the McMahon Act, all British government employees had to leave. All had gone by the end of 1946, except for Titterton, who was granted a special dispensation, and remained until 12 April 1947. The British Mission to the Manhattan Project ended when he departed. Returning to England, Titterton joined the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire. He headed a group that was part of Herbert Skinner's General Physics Division, responsible for research with nuclear emulsions and cloud chambers. Using photographic techniques, he investigated ternary fission, a comparatively rare type of nuclear fission in which the nucleus breaks into three pieces instead of two. This occurs in only about one in 500 fission events, so was not easy to observe. He examined the cloud chamber tracks of over one million events, finding about a thousand ternary alpha particle tracks with energy of between 15 MeV and 30 MeV, emitted at 90° to the two heavy fragments. He also researched the photodisintegration of light nuclei by gamma rays. Unfortunately, the synchrotron at Harwell was not powerful enough to create pions as he hoped, so he investigated "stars" (multi-particle disintegrations) in nuclear emulsions. In all, he published 28 papers between 1949 and 1952. He was also a consultant to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston that designed and developed Britain's first nuclear weapons. == Australia ==

Australian National University In August 1950, Titterton accepted an offer from Oliphant, now the director of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, of its foundation chair of Nuclear Physics. at the Australian National University During this time, Titterton continued to pursue his academic interests at the ANU. He had a 1.2 MeV Cockcroft-Walton accelerator installed so he could continue his work with nuclear emulsions. On study leave in 1954 he visited William Penney, a colleague from the Los Alamos Laboratory days who had become the Director of the AWRE at Aldermaston. On the voyages to and from England on the Orcades and , he wrote a book, Facing the Atomic Future (1956), in which he examined social, ethical and political issues surrounding nuclear power and nuclear weapons. an argument he repeated in a second book, with Frank Robotham, titled Uranium, Energy Source of the Future?, in which he put the case for nuclear power. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1957, and was created a knight bachelor on 1 January 1970. British nuclear testing On 16 September 1950, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee sounded out his Australian counterpart, Robert Menzies about the prospect of conducting British nuclear weapons tests in Australia. Menzies was agreeable. In April 1952, the British government asked if Titterton could assist with the forthcoming test in the Montebello Islands of Western Australia, now codenamed Operation Hurricane, as he was one of the few people outside the United States who had experience in the planning and conduct of nuclear tests. On Oliphant's advice, the vice chancellor, Sir Douglas Copland, agreed to release Titterton. Two further nuclear tests were carried out in 1953 at Emu Field, South Australia, as part of Operation Totem. Titterton and other scientists from the ANU conducted neutron flux measurements with photographic emulsions and neuron-threshold detectors. In July 1955, in response to growing concerns about health hazards related to British nuclear tests, the government created the Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee (AWTSC), with the power to veto tests it felt were a danger to people, flora or fauna. Titterton was one of its members, along with Leslie H. Martin, W. A. S. Butement, C. E. Eddy, Philip Baxter and L. J. Dwyer. In this capacity, Titterton witnessed British nuclear tests at Maralinga, starting with Operation Mosaic in May and June 1956. Titterton was grilled by the McClelland Royal Commission, which held hearings between August 1984 and September 1985 to investigate the conduct of British nuclear testing in Australia. He clashed repeatedly with its chairman, Jim McClelland, who accused Titterton of being "a British plant". His final report was scathing: Jack Waterford from the Canberra Times noted in Titterton's obituary that the "general charge of complaisance is better directed at Menzies than Titterton." T. R. Ophel, the historian of the ANU's Department of Physics, opined that "Rarely has it been more evident that the past is the proper territory of thoughtful histories. Hindsight, conditioned by political and scientific changes evolving over a 30-year period, cannot and should not be used to judge the past." == Retirement ==

Titterton officially retired in 1981, but retained a position as a visiting fellow in the Department of Nuclear Physics at the ANU. He suffered a stroke in 1982, but recovered. He divorced in 1986, and was injured seriously in a car accident in September 1987, which left him a quadriplegic. He considered himself as "on the scrap heap of life", and claimed that "if euthanasia were legal I should opt for it tomorrow". His papers are held by the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre at the University of Melbourne. == Notes ==