Herbert Wakefield Banks Skinner

Herbert Wakefield Banks Skinner (7 October 1900 – 20 January 1960) was a British physicist.

He was born in Ealing, London the only son of George Herbert, a director of the shoemaking firm of Lilley & Skinner, and Mabel Elisabeth Skinner. He was educated at Durston House School in Ealing and Rugby School. In 1919 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining his B.Sc in 1922. He then did research there at the Cavendish Laboratory for five years, and was awarded a Ph.D. He then moved to the Wills Physical Laboratory in Bristol to continue his research (1927–1939).

During World War II he was engaged on the development of radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment and on the atomic energy project at Berkeley University, California. After World War II he became a director of the General Physics Division at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell. The Russian spy, Klaus Fuchs, was a close friend and stayed with him in his house prior to Fuchs' arrest in 1950. Skinner was appointed Lyon-Jones Professor of Physics at Liverpool University (1949–1960)

In March 1942 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His candidature citation read: 

He died in Geneva on a visit to the European Organization for Nuclear Research. He had married Erna Abrahamsohn, an Austrian, in Bristol in 1931.

References

Category:1900 births
Category:1960 deaths
Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Category:People educated at Rugby School
Category:People from Ealing
Category:British nuclear physicists
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society
Category:Academics of the University of Bristol
Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty
Category:Academics of the University of Liverpool
Category:Manhattan Project people