Alan Ward obituary

My father, Alan Ward, who has died aged 96, was a physicist who profoundly influenced science education in Africa.

Born in Woodford, Essex, to Ursula (nee Vale) and Edward Ward, who worked in a bank, Alan went to Chichester high school for boys in West Sussex. Following a wartime degree in physics at the University of Birmingham, he completed a PhD in 1949, after which he was sent by the Atomic Energy Research Establishment to study Thorotrast poisoning in Denmark for two years. He married Honor Shedden, also a physicist, in 1950.