Charles Eryl Wynn-Williams (5 March 1903 – 30 August 1979), was a Welsh physicist,[1] noted for his research on electronic instrumentation for use in nuclear physics.

Initially he continued research into short electric waves at the Cavendish Laboratory under the supervision of Sir Ernest Rutherford, and was awarded the degree of PhD for this work in 1929.

In 1926 he employed his electronics skills to construct an amplifier using thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) for very small electrical currents.

In 1932 Wynn-Williams published details of his thyratron-based scale-of-two counter,[5] which allowed particles to be counted at much higher rates than previously.

His devices became crucial unifying elements in the hardware of the emergent discipline of nuclear physics, as they opened up new avenues of research.

[7] Twelve were made at the Mawdsley engineering factory in Dursley, Gloucestershire,[8] but turned out to be unreliable, so the other stream of development at the British Tabulating Machine Company at Letchworth was preferred.

Towards the end of 1942 the previously experimental non-Morse transmissions from teleprinter cipher machines were being received in greater numbers by the British Signals Intelligence collection sites.

He worked with a team from the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, which later included Tommy Flowers.

[11] Returning to Imperial College after the war, Wynn-Williams devoted himself largely to the development of practical undergraduate teaching, where he was an accomplished and much liked instructor.

Professor R. V. Jones, UK Government Scientific Intelligence advisor in the second World War, wrote in Nature in 1981:[14] ... the modern computer is only possible because of an invention made by a physicist, C. E.Wynn-Williams, in 1932 for counting nuclear particles: the scale-of-two counter, which may prove to be one of the most influential of all inventions.On his retirement in 1970 Wynn-Williams and his wife moved to Dôl-y-Bont, near Borth, in Cardiganshire.