Foster Neville Woodward FRSE FRIC (1905–1985) was a 20th-century British chemist involved in the creation of chemical weapons in the Second World War.
In 1930 he joined the Sutton Oak Chemical Defence Research Establishment on Reginald Road in St Helens, Merseyside.
A loophole in the wording of the Third Geneva Convention in 1925 (relating to chemical weapons) allowed countries to produce such products for research or defence purposes.
In 1940 most poison gas production was relocated to Rhydymwyn in North Wales, but Sutton Oak continued as the primary research establishment.
[4] In 1949 Woodward saw the relocation of most of the Sutton Oak nerve agent process to Nancekuke airfield near Redruth in Cornwall.