ScienceWeek starts on 8th March - we take a look at Tamworth’s atomic son.
‘Oppenheimer’ was one of the biggest hits of the summer cinema last year, but did you know a Tamworth born scientist worked alongside J.Robert Oppenheimer at the Manhattan Project’s most infamous development site ‘Los Alamos Laboratory’.
Sir Ernest William Titterton Ernest William Titterton, was born in Kettlebrook, Tamworth on 4 March 1916.
Titterton's primary education began next door to the family home in Kettlebrook at a single-room school for infants, starting at the age of four. After two years, he moved to a boys-only school in Glascote, Tamworth. This council school in a mining town had basic science facilities (uncommon at that time), and it was there that his interest in science was first kindled. At ten, Titterton won a scholarship to attend Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Tamworth, where he performed consistently well. He also excelled at sports, playing cricket and hockey for the school's first teams, and learned to play the piano and the organ. He had a talent for music, and sang with the choir at the Church of St Editha.
He received his School Certificate with seven credits when he was fourteen, and entered sixth form, which was at that time reserved for gifted students expected to continue to study at a tertiary level. He studied mathematics, chemistry, and physics. His physics teacher, William Summerhayes, cultivated Titterton's interest in science. Summerhayes believed that his pupils should learn how to conduct research, and had Titterton and another boy measure the diurnal variation of Earth's magnetic field. Their results were published in the school magazine.
Summerhayes hoped that Titterton would be able to enter the University of Cambridge, but the paper mill that his father worked for closed due to the Great Depression, leaving his father unemployed for a time, and unable to afford it. Instead, in 1934, Titterton was accepted into University of Birmingham on a teacher's scholarship, which paid his tuition fees, board and residence at Chancellor's Hall, a hostel for male undergraduates. Due to his achievements at secondary school, Ernest was allowed to begin his tertiary studies with second-year subjects, and even then he was said to have found them easy. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in 1936 with distinctions in both pure and applied mathematics and, of course, physics. An honours year quickly followed, and Titterton topped the year in physics.
A graduate of the University of Birmingham, Titterton worked in a research position under Mark Oliphant, who recruited him to work on radar for the British Admiralty during the first part of the Second World War. In 1943, he joined the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, where he helped develop the first atomic bombs. He eventually became one of the laboratory's group leaders. He participated in the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll in 1946, where he performed the countdown for both tests. Returning to England, Titterton joined the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire. He was also a consultant to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston that designed and developed Britain's first nuclear weapons.
In August 1950, Titterton accepted an offer from Oliphant to become the foundation Chair of Nuclear Physics at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. He lived and worked in Australia until his death on 8th February 1990.
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