Wallace Akers

Sir Wallace Alan Akers (9 September 1888 – 1 November 1954) was a British chemist and industrialist. Beginning his academic career at Oxford he specialized in physical chemistry. During the Second World War, he was the director of the Tube Alloys project, a clandestine programme aiming to research and develop British atomic weapons capabilities, from 1941 to 1945. After the war he was director of research at Imperial Chemical Industries. He also served as a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and the committee that drew up the organisation of what became the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He died in 1954 at the age of 66.

Biography Wallace Alan Akers was born in Walthamstow, England, the second child of an accountant, Charles Akers, and his wife, Mary Ethelreda née Brown. He was educated at Lake House School in Bexhill-on-Sea, Essex, and Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he specialised in physical chemistry, graduating with first class honours in 1909. Official Historian Margaret Gowing noted that "No doubt Akers had been picked for his personality and drive that had been considered so important and which he possessed in abundance".

Akers' ICI background led to difficulties when it came to dealing with the American Manhattan Project. American officials such as Vannevar Bush, James Conant and Leslie Groves saw him as "an Imperial Chemical Industries man at heart", and he aroused American suspicions that British interest in atomic energy was with its commercial possibilities after the war. As a result, James Chadwick was appointed the head of the British mission to the Manhattan Project, but Akers remained director of Tube Alloys until the end of the war.

In 1946, Akers returned to the Board of ICI where he served as director of research until April 1953, when he retired, having reached the compulsory retirement age of 65. and was knighted in 1946, both for his services to the war effort. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1953, and received honorary degrees of D.Sc. from Durham University and D.C.L. from Oxford University.

After his retirement, he remained a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and was part of the three-man April 1953 committee that drew up the organisation of what became the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He was a member of the National Gallery's scientific advisory committee, later becoming a trustee, and was the treasurer of the Chemical Society from 1948 to 1954. He married Bernadette Marie La Marre in 1953, and died at their home in Alton, Hampshire, on 1 November 1954.