Sir Denys Wilkinson obituary

Physicist and expert on the electromagnetic properties of nuclear isotopes

In 1943, the physicist Sir Denys Wilkinson, who has died aged 93, gained his first degree, and was immediately drawn into second world war service, initially on radar. From there he went on to nuclear physics, as a member of the British nuclear reactor team relocated from Cambridge to Canada until 1946 to facilitate collaboration with the US in developing nuclear weapons.

Though this was the first step in a career that saw Wilkinson become a professor at Oxford University (1957-76) and vice-chancellor of Sussex (1976-89), it almost took a quite different direction. In Canada, Wilkinson's job was to monitor neutrons in the reactor. This proved nearly fatal, as he got radiation sickness, his white blood count fell, and he was given six months to live. Having recovered, and back in Cambridge, for a time afterwards it looked as if he probably would not be able to go back to nuclear physics. He became interested in a mystery of bird migration, and applied to the problem analysis techniques that he had learned from nuclear physics to solving it.

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