William George Penney, Baron Penney, (24 June 19093 March 1991) was an English mathematician and professor of mathematical physics at the Imperial College London and later the rector of Imperial College London. He had a leading role in the development of High Explosive Research, Britain's clandestine nuclear programme that started in 1942 during the Second World War which produced the first British atomic bomb in 1952.

As the head of the British delegation working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory, Penney initially carried out calculations to predict the damage effects generated by the blast wave of an atomic bomb. Upon returning home, Penney directed the British nuclear weapons directorate, codenamed Tube Alloys and directed scientific research at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment which resulted in the first detonation of a British nuclear bomb in Operation Hurricane in 1952. After the test, Penney became chief advisor to the new United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). He was later chairman of the authority, which he used in international negotiations to control nuclear testing with the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Penney's notable scientific contributions included the mathematics for complex wave dynamics, both in shock and gravity waves, proposing optimisation problems and solutions in hydrodynamics (which plays a major role in materials science and metallurgy.) During his later years, Penney lectured in mathematics and physics; he was the Rector of Imperial College London 1967–1973.

Early life and education

William George Penney was born in Gibraltar on 24 June 1909, the oldest child and only son of William Alfred Penney, a sergeant-major in the British Army's Ordnance Corps who was then serving overseas, and Blanche Evelyn Johnson, who had worked as a cashier before her marriage. His parents moved about frequently, but Penney did not always accompany them. After the outbreak of the First World War, Penney, his mother and his sisters moved to Sheerness, Kent, where he went to primary school. He then attended a school near Colchester, and finally, was at Sheerness Technical School for Boys from 1924 to 1926, where he displayed a talent for science. He participated in boxing and athletics, winning the school's dash. He also played cricket, and he was centre-forward on the school football team.

In 1927, Penney's passion for science landed him in a local science laboratory where he worked for 10 shillings a week () as a laboratory assistant. This helped him to gain a Kent county scholarship and a royal scholarship to the Royal College of Science (RCS), a constituent college of Imperial College London. He played centre-forward on the RCS soccer team. He was permitted to skip the first year of the course, and graduated in 1929, obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics with First Class Honours at age 20. His talent was recognised by the Governor's Prize for Mathematics from the faculty of science. He served as the first chairman of the UK's Standing Committee on Structural Safety from 1976 to 1982.

Honours and awards

thumb|right|Penney (left) with [[Otto Frisch, Rudolf Peierls and John Cockcroft after receiving their American Medals of Freedom in 1946.]]

Penney was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1946. He was its treasurer from 1956 to 1960 and vice-president from 1958 to 1969. He became a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1962, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1970, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1973. He received the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1967. Among the honours he received in 1969 was the Rumford Medal by the Royal Society, the Glazebrook Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics and the James Alfred Ewing Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and he was awarded the Kelvin Gold Medal the following year. He was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Melbourne in 1956, the University of Durham in 1957, the University of Oxford in 1959, the University of Bath in 1966 and by the University of Reading in 1970. For his services to the United States, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1946.

Penney was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1946, and was raised to Knight Commander of the order in 1952. He was made a life peer, taking the title Baron Penney, of East Hendred in the Royal County of Berkshire on 7 July 1967, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1969. As a life peer he was entitled to sit in the House of Lords, but did so only twelve times between 1967 and 1973, and voted for only three bills: for sanctions on Rhodesia in 1968, for an amendment to the redistribution bill in 1969, and for the accession of the United Kingdom to the European Communities in 1970.

Death and legacy

In later years he admitted to qualms about his work but felt it was necessary. When aggressively questioned by the McClelland Royal Commission investigating the test programmes at Monte Bello and Maralinga in 1985, he acknowledged that at least one of the twelve tests had unsafe levels of fallout. However, he maintained that due care was taken and that the tests conformed to the internationally accepted safety standards of the time. Jim McClelland broadly accepted Penney's view but anecdotal evidence to the contrary received wide coverage in the press. By promoting a more Australian nationalist view, then current in the government of Bob Hawke, McClelland had also identified "villains" in the previous Australian and British administrations. As a senior witness Penney bore the brunt of the allegations, and his health was badly affected by the experience. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1991, and died on 3 March 1991 at his home in the village of East Hendred, aged 81. The Guardian described him as its "guiding light" and his scientific and administrative leadership was said to be crucial in its successful and timely creation. His leadership of the team that exploded the first British hydrogen bomb at Christmas Island was instrumental in restoring the exchange of nuclear technology between Britain and the US in 1958, and he was credited as playing a leading part in the negotiations which led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. His Kronig-Penney model for the behaviour of an electron in a periodic potential is still taught and used today in solid-state physics and is used to explain the origin of band gaps.

Notes

References

  • The Penney Report (1947) ; WikiLeaks.