Thomas Gerald Pickavance

Thomas Gerald Pickavance (19 October 1915 – 12 November 1991) was a British nuclear physicist who was a leading authority on the design and use of particle accelerators. He was generally known as Gerry Pickavance.

Life and career He was born in St Helens, Lancashire, the son of estate agent William Pickavance and his wife Ethel and was educated at the University of Liverpool.

He worked on the development of the University of Liverpool cyclotron and carried out research with it on the Tube Alloys project during the Second World War. He was later responsible for the construction of the Harwell cyclotron and became leader of the Accelerator Group.

In 1965, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1976 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1979, he was awarded the Glazebrook Medal by the Institute of Physics.

He died in 1991. He had married Alice Boulton and had two sons and a daughter.