Herbert Wakefield Banks Skinner (7 October 1900 – 20 January 1960) was a British physicist. Biography Skinner was born on 7 October 1900 at 15 Woodville Road, Ealing, the only son of George Herbert, director of the shoe firm Lilley & Skinner, and Mabel Elizabeth (née Knight). He was taught at home before starting school, age 9, at Durston House, from where he won a mathematical scholarship to Rugby in 1914. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1919 to read natural sciences and mathematics; he graduated in 1922. Skinner’s research career started in the Cavendish Laboratory where, under the supervision of Charles D Ellis, he worked on the β-ray spectrum of radium B and C. Five years later, in 1927, he moved to the physics department of the University of Bristol, which was headed by Arthur M Tyndall and very well equipped. He investigated the excitation potentials of lithium and beryllium, and published the results several years later. This research “prepared the way for his outstanding work on the soft X-ray emission spectra of light metals” in the period 1932-1940. During the war years, Skinner was involved in radar and related techniques. Like other scientists, e.g. R A Smith, he joined the staff of Bawdsey Research Station (BRS) on the Suffolk coast, to work on the Chain Home {CH} network of early warning radar stations. With the equipment they developed they could detect surface submarines several miles away. He then went to the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Swanage where he worked on a microwave crystal mixer and the detection of submarines. In March 1942 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His candidature citation read: Skinner changed tack in 1943 when he joined a group of British physicists, led by Mark Oliphant, working at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory under the direction of Ernest Lawrence to work on the electromagnetic separation of the uranium isotopes. In 1946, the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was set up at RAF Harwell, with J D Cockcroft as its first director, although he did not return from Canada until later that year. In Cockcroft's absence, Skinner acted on his behalf, and was heavily involved in recruiting staff and building a research laboratory. The construction of a large cyclotron, a 6 MeV Van de Graaff generator, and the 100 kilowatt GLEEP reactor were all started, but Skinner’s most notable contribution was the creation of