Alec Merrison

Sir Alexander Walter Merrison FRS, was a British physicist born in Wood Green, London on 20 March 1924. He was a professor in Experimental Physics at Liverpool University and the first Director of the new Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory. He later became Vice-Chancellor of University of Bristol.

Alec Merrison initially attended Tottenham Grammar School and subsequently Enfield Grammar School, before going on to King's College London (which had been evacuated to Bristol during the Second World War) graduating B.Sc. with First Class Honours in 1944.

Merrison was first appointed as an Experimental Officer working on radar at the Signal Research and Development Establishment, Christchurch, Hampshire 1944-1946. In 1946 he joined the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, as Senior Scientific Officer commencing research in nuclear physics, developing among the earliest neutron spectrometers. Leaving Harwell in 1951 for the University of Liverpool he was Leverhulme Fellow and Lecturer (Ph.D. 1957), beginning ten years of research on elementary particle physics, using newly developed proton synchrotron machines. Senior Physicist at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) from 1957-1960, subsequently Merrison was Chair in Experimental Physics at Liverpool from 1960 until 1969. In 1962 he was also first Director of the new Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory (officially opened in 1967), responsible for the construction of the 5 GeV electron synchrotron NINA.

In 1969 Merrison left Liverpool, appointed Vice-Chancellor of University of Bristol serving until 1984, presiding over many changes in University structure and funding, overseeing considerable expansion in size, toward the end of his tenure making controversial reductions in some departments as government reduced its funding of universities.

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