Sir Ernest William Titterton CMG FRS FAA (4 March 1916 – 8 February 1990) was a British nuclear physicist.

In August 1950, Titterton accepted an offer from Oliphant to become the foundation Chair of Nuclear Physics at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.

Over the next thirty years, Titterton held high positions on various science, defence and nuclear-related committees, institutes and councils in Australia.

[2] Titterton's primary education began next door to the family home in Kettlebrook at a single-room school for infants, starting at the age of four.

At ten, Titterton won a scholarship to attend Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Tamworth, where he performed consistently well.

He received his School Certificate with seven credits when he was fourteen, and entered sixth form, which was at that time reserved for gifted students expected to continue to study at a tertiary level.

Summerhayes believed that his pupils should learn how to conduct research, and had Titterton and another boy measure the diurnal variation of Earth's magnetic field.

Instead, in 1934, Titterton was accepted into University of Birmingham on a teacher's scholarship, which paid his tuition fees, board and residence at Chancellor's Hall, a hostel for male undergraduates.

Due to his achievements at secondary school, Ernest was allowed to begin his tertiary studies with second-year subjects, and even then he was said to have found them easy.

[2] In 1937, Ernest was presented with a £92 university scholarship, and worked in a research position under Mark Oliphant, the chairman of the physics department.

This met with a lukewarm reception, but he graduated with his Diploma in Education, and was even awarded the Elizabeth Cadbury Prize for achieving top marks in the class.

[4][5] While at the University of Birmingham, Titterton met Peggy Eileen Johnson, a laboratory assistant, who helped him build a prototype spark gap generator.

Along with Frisch, Darol Froman, Rudolf Peierls, Philip Moon and Alvin C. Graves, he developed the "pin method".

[2] While most Americans saw Los Alamos as a remote and isolated place, it looked quite different to those accustomed to the shortages and danger of wartime Britain.

Peggy, who worked at Los Alamos as a laboratory technician,[15] pleasantly surprised and impressed Brigadier General Leslie Groves by congratulating him on the food and accommodation.

[16] Titterton played the grand piano at dances and recitals at the Fuller Lodge, often accompanied by Richard Feynman on the drums.

He headed a group that was part of Herbert Skinner's General Physics Division, responsible for research with nuclear emulsions and cloud chambers.

Unfortunately, the synchrotron at Harwell was not powerful enough to create pions as he hoped, so he investigated "stars" (multi-particle disintegrations) in nuclear emulsions.

On study leave in 1954 he visited William Penney, a colleague from the Los Alamos Laboratory days who had become the Director of the AWRE at Aldermaston.

[2] He was a strong public advocate of nuclear power in Australia,[20] writing letters to and articles in the Canberra Times.

When he heard that the 33 MeV electron synchrotron at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, Worcestershire, was to be closed down, he wrote to Cockcroft, now the director of the AERE, and asked if he could have it for the ANU.

With Tony Brinkley, a researcher that he recruited in England, he studied photonuclear reactions with the Cockcroft-Walton accelerators, and bremsstrahlung, the radiation produced by the deceleration of a charged particle, with the electron synchrotron.

When the Australian and British governments jointly agreed to build the Anglo-Australian telescope in 1969, a dispute arose over whether it should be controlled by the ANU or its own management.

Unable to secure funding in Australia, he managed to persuade the British Science Research Council to donate the required equipment to the ANU from facilities in England that were being closed down.

[26] On 16 September 1950, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee sounded out his Australian counterpart, Robert Menzies about the prospect of conducting British nuclear weapons tests in Australia.

In this capacity, Titterton witnessed British nuclear tests at Maralinga, starting with Operation Mosaic in May and June 1956.

[2] Titterton was grilled by the McClelland Royal Commission, which held hearings between August 1984 and September 1985 to investigate the conduct of British nuclear testing in Australia.

(49) The fact that the AWTSC did not negotiate with the UK openly and independently in relation to the minor trials was a result of the special relationship which enabled Titterton to deal with the AWRE in a personal and informal manner.

He was from first to last, 'their man' and the concerns which were ultimately voiced in relation to the Vixen B proposals and which forced the introduction of more formal procedures for approving minor trials were a direct result of the perceived inadequacies in the manner in which he had carried out his tasks.

"[23] T. R. Ophel, the historian of the ANU's Department of Physics, opined that "Rarely has it been more evident that the past is the proper territory of thoughtful histories.