His ambition to join the navy was thwarted by poor eyesight, and he instead studied at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he concentrated on mathematics and chemistry, doing work on indicators and the motions of ions in gases.
Tizard graduated in 1908 and at his tutor's suggestion, he spent time in Berlin, where he met and formed a close friendship with Frederick Alexander Lindemann, later an influential scientific advisor of Winston Churchill.
[1] His successes in that post (and after promotion to permanent secretary on 1 June 1927)[2] included the establishment of the post of the Chemical Research Laboratory in Teddington, the appointment of Harry Wimperis as Director of Scientific Research to the Air Force and finally the decision to leave to become the President and Rector of Imperial College London in 1929, a position he held until 1942, when he was elected President of Magdalen College, Oxford.
[3] In 1938, Tizard persuaded Mark Oliphant at Birmingham University to drop some of his nuclear research and concentrate on development of an improved source of short-wave radiation.
Jones' view that the Germans had established a system of radio-beam bombing aids (Battle of the Beams) over the UK had been overruled—Tizard led what became known as the Tizard Mission to the United States.
As a result of his insistence that UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study, the department set up arguably the most marvellously-named committee in the history of the civil service, the Flying Saucer Working Party (FSWP).
[6]Tizard had followed the official debate about ghost rockets with interest and was intrigued by the increasing media coverage of UFO sightings in the United Kingdom, America and other parts of the world.
The DSI/JTIC minutes recording this historic development read as follows: The Chairman said that Sir Henry Tizard felt that reports of flying saucers ought not to be dismissed without some investigation and he had, therefore, agreed that a small DSI/JTIC Working Party should be set up under the chairmanship of Mr Turney to investigate future reports.After discussion, it was agreed that the members of the Working Party should be representatives from DSI1, ADNI(Tech), MI10 and ADI(Tech).
One of the most controversial meetings that Tizard had to attend in his capacity as chair of the Defence Research Policy Committee would emerge only many years later with the declassification of CIA documents: a meeting on 1 June 1951 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, between Tizard, Omond Solandt (chairman of Defence Research and Development Canada) and representatives of the CIA to discuss "brainwashing".