Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme (/skɜːrm/; 5 December 1922 – 25 June 1987) was a British physicist who was born in Lewisham.

At the end of 1943 Peierls and several other of the British scientists working on the atom, were transferred to the United States to assist in the Manhattan project to build a nuclear weapon.

In 1949 he married Dorothy Mildred, a lecturer in experimental nuclear physics whom he had met at Birmingham University.

[7][8] Returning to Britain both he and Dorothy gained posts at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell from 1950 to 1962.

For this work Skyrme was awarded the Hughes medal of the Royal Society in 1985 but never received the full accolade of a fellowship there.

He found this involved heavy lecturing commitments and was less than stimulating to his research work and by 1964 had returned to Britain to a post as professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Birmingham where he remained for the rest of his career.

[8][9] His hobbies were home electronics – he built his own television receiver and Hi-Fi in the 1950s; and gardening, where he and Dorothy made an early attempt at self sufficiency.