Peter Tanner, my father, who has died aged 92, was a research physicist who worked on a number of significant technological innovations.
Born in Poplar, east London, Peter was one of five children of Alex (nee Zanerra) and William Tanner, an estate agent, who had served in the Royal Artillery during the first world war. His mother’s tenacity during the stark days of the Depression saw her boys win scholarships to the Coopers’ Company school.
During the second world war Peter was evacuated to Frome, Somerset. He left to study physics at Hull University, and afterwards served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy (1951-54). He then worked as a research physicist in radar development at Marconi in Chelmsford Essex, where in 1954 he met Sheila Bailey, a teacher; they married two years later.
In 1959, he became a research physicist at Associated Electrical Industries at Aldermaston Court, Berkshire, working with the physicist TE Allibone and his team in the gas discharge group on the fusion project. Its purpose was to explore the possibility of achieving thermonuclear reactions in a controlled way to generate electricity. The team built Sceptre, one of the world’s first fusion reactors.
From AEI he joined the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), in 1963, set up by the government after the war to help inventors commercialise their innovations. My father had several roles, joining as head of the electronics and electrical engineering group. Working closely with Christopher Cockerell, inventor of the hovercraft, Peter would regale us with stories of how Cockerell had rolled out early blueprints for the hovercraft across his office desk.
In 1981, NRDC was combined with the National Enterprise Board to form the British Technology Group, where my father became director of business development. He would speak of meetings with Clive Sinclair, sitting around the kitchen table in his Cambridgeshire farmhouse, and bringing home early versions of a calculator or a pocket-sized television.
Enhancing NRDC featured in Harold Wilson’s 1966 manifesto, as he strove to harness what he called the “white heat of technology”, and Peter would meet Wilson at Downing Street to discuss technology transfer. Many inventions NRDC helped commercialise, such as magnetic resonance imaging, went on to make key contributions to British life.
Decades later, colleagues at King’s College London revealed that research he had started at Marconi had progressed little since, and he was accepted on to a PhD to complete his thesis, Developments in Thermionic Converters (1995-2001). He was awarded a doctorate at the age of 72.
On retirement in 1994, when he was not continuing his research, he would be reading or reciting poetry to us from memory. Or pursuing his duties as a church warden in Mortimer, Berkshire. Latterly, as he would often say, he was just waiting for the last bus.
Sheila died in 2005. Peter is survived by his two children, Liz and me, his grandchildren, Sam, Jack, Annie and Will, his sister, Joan, and a stepdaughter, Lindsay, from Sheila’s first marriage.
