He was born in
St Helens, Lancashire, the son of
estate agent William Pickavance and his wife Ethel and was educated at the
University of Liverpool. He worked on the development of the University of Liverpool
cyclotron and carried out research with it on the
Tube Alloys project during the
Second World War. He was later responsible for the construction of the
Harwell cyclotron and became leader of the Accelerator Group. In 1965, he was made a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1976 elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1979, he was awarded the
Glazebrook Medal by the
Institute of Physics. He died in 1991. He had married Alice Boulton and had two sons and a daughter. ==References==