Herbert Whitby

I knew Herbert from the Nimrod Injector days. He had developed a chain of amplifiers for driving the accelerator. He did wonderful things with them like self exciting the cavity through the amplifier chain. He was quite brilliant.

I used to come down from Manchester to see him and the others in the team. Funnily enough one of the team was later in charge of the PS group when I left Cern. Sadly he died soon after I left.
He was Roy Billinge. On the Nimrod Injector he was rather small fry.

I first knew of Herbert through his neighbour on the Abingdon estate a Gordon and Grace Thomason. We played bridge pretty frequently and once played at their house. We met in great Malvern. He told me of the Spitfire that came to earth in Herbert's garden!

My last recollection of Herbert is hearing that he had been persuaded by Peter Dunn to leave Harwell for what I thought as a stupid idea to generate electricity from a reactor by using thermoelectricity. I called it hair brained and was rather rudely told off by Nigel West.

I met up with Peter on the telephone after John Adlam's death. He "said" that he would come to the funeral but cried off at the last moment using "a funny turn" as his excuse. Peter was a prof at Reading after his Malvern and Harwell adventures. I built a modulator for him once at Malvern.
He too was a bridge player along with John Adlam and Tony Egglington who later rose to dizzy heights in the hierachy.

Such memories I shall share with Herbert when I meet up with him in Saltash before his 102nd birthday in september this year.

As Leo Hobbis says in NZ, Herbert was and is magnificent and I agree!