Bernard Miles Wheatley (1923–2014)

In 1939 Bernard was 16 years old and his father was keen that he should not see the kind of military action that he himself had witnessed in the First World War. His father had research contacts at Cambridge University and a job was obtained for Bernard as a technician on a government radar development programme in Portsmouth that was partly directed by G P Thompson, who was then Professor of Physics at Imperial College. When war ended Thompson guided him to take up a Physics degree course at Imperial College. At that time the Diploma of Imperial College (DIC) was a compressed two-year lecture course with a final year in research or lecturing. Bernard took the research project option, which was intended to be the use of a cyclotron for the study of the nuclear structure of nitrogen. Such was the erratic performance of the prototype cyclotron that the project ended up by being a study of the potential hazards of stray radiation fields—how to measure and reduce them. He sought advice on this from Profesor W V (Val) Mayneord in the Physics Department at the Royal Cancer Hospital, Fulham Road (subsequently the Royal Marsden) and subsequently studied under him for a PhD in cyclotron generated high energy x-rays. He was also involved in a range of other medical physics research topics including the development of a 2 MeV van de Graaff generator for rotation therapy and he became known for the production of an instrument—an optical integrator—which enabled the calculation of doses in x-ray fields of any size and shape. This was referred to as the Wheatley optical integrator. Its use was extended more widely in solving a large number of radiotherapy dosimetry problems.

Val Mayneord had a profound influence upon Bernard's career and they were subsequently to become life-long colleagues and friends. Mayneord was known for his careful recruitment of staff, subsequently giving them considerable freedom and time to develop their skills—before exercising close scrutiny. This was an approach that Bernard subsequently adopted so successfully as leader of a research team at Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories. Bernard's early interest in radiation hazards, and his experience with accelerators and high energy radiations, led to his prestigious appointment as Head of Health Physics at CERN, Geneva in 1957.

Following the Fleck report on the Windscale accident of 1957, which recognised the crucial part played by professional health physicists in dealing with such incidents, Bernard (then Head of Health Physics at CERN) initiated the establishment of a European Health Physics Society, which had its first meeting at CERN in September 1958. This European initiative led to the formations of several national societies. In the UK Bernard was part of the committee that took this forward and eventually formed the Society for Radiological Protection. It included leading figures of the day: W G Marley, B A J Lister, D B B Janisch, W N Saxby, H J Dunster, G C Dale, J A Bonnell, F J Tildsley, E W Jackson, S B Osborn and R Oliver. The first meeting of the UK section of the Health Physics Society was held in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College in London on 8 May 1963. The first meeting agreed that the name of the new organisation should be 'The Society for Radiological Protection, the United Kingdom Section of the Health Physics Society'. Greg Marley, who was elected President at this meeting, declared all present to be Founder Members. All of this band of pioneers played a major role in the development of the Society and of the profession both nationally and internationally.

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As well as being a Founder Member of the SRP Bernard was Secretary (1971–73), President (1978–79) and the Founding Editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection (1981–83). He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Society in 1989. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. For some years Bernard was Chairman of the British Radiological Protection Association Ltd, a Member of the Editorial Board of Physics in Medicine and Biology and a member of numerous scientific and government committees.

Bernard was head-hunted in 1960 by the CEGB to be Head of Health Physics at its newly constructed nuclear research labs at Berkeley—Berkeley Nuclear laboratories—at the start of the UK civil nuclear power programme. His remit included protection issues involved with the handling of highly radioactive nuclear fuel during post-irradiation examination at Berkeley, as well as wider issues concerned with the operation of various reactor designs under consideration at the time, waste disposal and environmental impact. The realisation that a number of important areas of radiation protection were in need of scientific underpinning led him to develop a research group that covered diverse topics such as hot particle and neutron dosimetry, accident risk analysis, environmental radioactivity, waste disposal, radiochemistry, epidemiology and radiobiology. He encouraged 'thinking outside the box', and while being an advocate of nuclear power generation he promoted a critical evaluation of radiation safety standards. Those of us who followed his guidance were sometimes wrongly misunderstood as being anti-nuclear! The rationale was to question existing standards, identify strengths and weaknesses, and initiate fundamental research to underpin radiation protection standards so that they were defensible and would stand the test of time. The questioning of national standards and ICRP recommendations was not well received in some quarters at that time. However, this approach served the nuclear arm of the CEGB well in public enquiries and helped to maintain low operator doses well below the national average at a time before the wider application of ALARA produced dose reduction in all parts of the nuclear industry. Bernard headed health physics research at Berkeley until his retirement in 1986.

In his retirement Bernard kept an ongoing interest in a range of scientific topics and many of us who knew him would periodically receive cut-out news and scientific articles relating to items that over the years had been of mutual scientific and personal interest. I will remember his avid pipe-smoking that provided us with a continuous supply of tobacco tins—ideal for keeping scientific samples. I fondly recall his frequent end-of-day message to his staff: Go home to your families—if you haven't finished your job you have not been working hard enough!