He was born in
Leicester, the son of George Raven Deacon and his wife Emma (née Drinkwater). He was educated (1919–24) at the Newarke School, Leicester and then the
City of Leicester Boys' School. He went as a King's scholar to
King's College London (1924–27) where he was awarded a first-class honours degree in chemistry in 1926 and a diploma of education in 1927. His first post was as lecturer in chemistry and mathematics at Rochdale Technical School. In 1927 he was offered a place as a chemist on the Discovery Antarctic survey and sailed on Christmas Eve on the
RRS William Scoresby, transferring in 1928 to the larger
Discovery II. In 1937 he was awarded a
Doctor of Science by the
University of London for this work. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1944. During the
Second World War he initially worked on
HMS Osprey, Portland involved in anti-submarine warfare. This was decommissioned in 1941. He afterwards worked in Fairlie, Scotland, doing research on
ASDIC for the Admiralty. In 1944 he joined the
Admiralty Research Laboratory in Teddington, Middlesex to study ocean waves. In 1949 he was appointed as the first Director of the new UK
National Institute of Oceanography which was later absorbed into the Natural Environment Research Council as the
National Oceanography Centre, now
UKRI. He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1957. His proposers were
James Ritchie,
John Barclay Tait,
Cyril Edward Lucas, and
Vero Wynne-Edwards. He was awarded CBE in 1964 and knighted in 1977. He retired in 1971 and died in 1984 at his home in
Milford, Surrey, aged 78. ==Family==