[2] After completing school he joined the University of Birmingham as a laboratory assistant in the Department of Mining.
[1] Whitmore enlisted with the RAF in 1943 and was posted to the officers radio location training facilities at Yatesbury, where he learned radar operations.
Whitmore pursued research into the cleaning of coal, viscosity and sedimentation of material suspended in fluids.
He published a paper with another academic on “The theory of the flow of blood in narrow tubes” in the American Journal of Physiology in 1959.
He developed links with industry[7] which led to the establishment of a number of scholarships and support from MIM Holdings Ltd for the creation of a Mineral Research Centre.
He retired in 1985 and was made Emeritus Professor, a role which led him to pursue historical studies in Brisbane and Ipswich,[8] including heritage studies of smelters in north Queensland, the Mount Crosby water treatment station and the Tower Mill at Spring Hill.
He also undertook industrial archaeology studies of coke oven technologies, the Rhondda colliery and sawmill in the Ipswich region.