Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring
British peer and scientist (1932-1996)
Walter Charles Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring (5 March 1932 – 20 February 1996) was a noted theoretical physicist and leader in the UK's energy sector.
Early life
The son of Frank Marshall and Amy Pearson, he attended the grammar school St Illtyd's Boys College
(now St Illtyd's Catholic High School).
He studied mathematical physics at Birmingham University and gained a PhD there under Rudolf Peierls.
Career
He joined the Theoretical Physics Division at AERE Harwell in 1954, succeeding Brian Flowers as Head of that Division in 1960 and becoming Director of AERE in 1968; he eventually was appointed Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in 1981.
CEGB
As a champion of nuclear power, he was appointed, in 1983, to be chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board. He was also highly sceptical of fusion power, famously noting that "fusion is an idea with infinite possibility and zero chance of success."
In 1989, with the government's plan to reorganise and privatise electricity generation, the position of Chairman of the CEGB disappeared. He was made Chairman of National Power which included a large number of the coal- and oil-fired power stations and all of the nuclear power stations. National Power was a division of the CEGB until it was privatised in 1990. This was done as he had a close association with nuclear power, from the early years. But before the privatisation process was complete, the city was not happy with the nuclear component in National Power, and it was removed from the process and placed into another state-owned company (only to be part privatised some 5 years later).
“Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring” enters the record as british peer and scientist (1932-1996). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Walter, Marshall and Baron can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2271991. VIAF identifies the subject as 28445626. The Library of Congress control number is n83061187. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1996, 1954 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.