Brian Haywood obituary

My grandfather, Brian Haywood, who has died aged 91, spent his career working as a nuclear physicist, mainly at the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

He was born in Birmingham to Vi and Hal, who ran a haberdashery shop. An only child, Brian lived through much of the blitz and spent the evenings in an air-raid shelter. He attended Bearwood Road school, then obtained a scholarship to King Edward VI Five Ways grammar school, and in his first year was evacuated to Monmouth with his classmates. He stayed here for a year.

After returning to Birmingham, Brian took an undergraduate degree and then a PhD in physics at Birmingham University. He also met my grandmother, Anne James, who worked in the department. The couple married in 1956, and when he got his first job, at Harwell, they moved to Wantage.

In 1960 the young couple moved to Deep River, Ontario, after Brian was offered a job at Chalk River laboratories, a nuclear research facility. They had a daughter (my mother) and took road trip adventures through Canada and the US with baby in tow, before returning to the UK in 1963.

They went on to have a second daughter and the family moved to Abingdon, Oxfordshire. For the rest of his career Brian continued his nuclear research at Harwell, particularly, in the 1960s and 70s, in neutron scattering. Later he moved to the material physics and metallurgy division, where his work included research on gas pipes for British Gas contracts.

In 1993, Brian and Anne moved to Christchurch, Dorset. Brian was passionate about learning and could speak French, German and Russian, and dabbled in Spanish and Welsh. In his retirement, he attended French conversation classes, volunteered at the Red House Museum in the town and was treasurer of his local branch of Probus, the club for retired people. He enjoyed a daily walk to the sea and spending time with his family.

Despite bowel cancer, a triple heart bypass and a stroke, Brian lived independently with Anne until last year. His love of learning stayed with him even when he developed dementia, but he struggled after his stroke in 2017 deprived him of one of his greatest joys: reading.

He is survived by his daughters, Helen and Elizabeth, and his grandchildren, Tom and me. Anne died two weeks after him.