My brother, Nick Hitchon, was an expert in nuclear fusion who eventually accepted that he would always be best known for appearing in a groundbreaking TV documentary rather than as a scientist.
Nick, who has died aged 65 following a long illness, was a determined and committed individual whose work took him thousands of miles from his upbringing in a Yorkshire Dales farming family.
His dream was to provide the world with relatively cheap and clean power, an ambition that remains unfulfilled.
He was also one of the participants in the award-winning Up series of TV films. This began in 1964, when a researcher was struggling to find a rural child who would talk to the camera for an edition of Granada TV’s World in Action programme called Seven Up! It featured children aged seven from differing backgrounds giving their views on various subjects.
Directed to the one-room Arncliffe CE primary school in Littondale, North Yorkshire, the researcher was told Nick would definitely talk, but he was only six. He said that was near enough, and Nick was filmed explaining that he wanted to learn about the Moon, though he refused to say what he thought about girls. It was meant to be a one-off programme, but the cameras returned for a follow-up, 7 Plus Seven, and then every seven years after that.
Nick was born in Skipton, the eldest of the three sons of Iona (nee Hall) and Guy Hitchon, who farmed in the Littondale hamlet of Hawkswick. When the next instalment of Up was filmed, Nick was actually 13 and at Ermysted’s grammar school, Skipton, where his love of science was flourishing, he captained the rugby first XV and played for a Yorkshire Schools team.
From there he went to Merton College, Oxford, to study physics, gaining his DPhil at the age of 23. He was about to make a major change, as he moved to the US in 1982 with his first wife, Jacqui Bush, to continue his work on nuclear fusion at the University of Wisconsin. Nick and Jacqui later divorced.
He remained at the university’s Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering for four decades, becoming a full professor in 1994 and department chair from 1999 to 2002. He was the author of more than 100 articles and three books in his specialist field.
Nick participated in all the Up series films. Though he felt poorly represented in some of the early programmes and always found the interviews uncomfortable, he brought the same commitment to making the films as he did to other areas of his life.
Nick was diagnosed with cancer five years ago but was determined to live as full a life as possible, only retiring from the university in the spring of 2022.
He is survived by his second wife, Cryss Brunner, whom he married in 2001, and his son, Adam, from his first marriage, and by his brothers, Chris and me.
