Henry Tizard

Sir Henry Thomas Tizard (23 August 1885 – 9 October 1959) was an English chemist, inventor and Rector of Imperial College, who developed the modern "octane rating" used to classify petrol, helped develop radar in World War II, and led the first serious studies of UFOs.

Life

Tizard was born in Gillingham, Kent in 1885, the only son of Thomas Henry Tizard (1839–1924), naval officer and hydrographer, and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Churchward. His ambition to join the navy was thwarted by poor eyesight, and he instead studied at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he concentrated on mathematics and chemistry, doing work on indicators and the motions of ions in gases. Tizard graduated in 1908 and at his tutor's suggestion, he spent time in Berlin, where he met and formed a close friendship with Frederick Alexander Lindemann, later an influential scientific advisor of Winston Churchill. In 1909, he became a researcher in the Davy–Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Institution, working on colour change indicators. In 1911, Tizard returned to Oxford as a tutorial fellow at Oriel College and to work as a demonstrator in the electrical laboratory. On 25 July 1942, Tizard was elected President of Magdalen College, Oxford. He resigned this position in 1946.

Tizard was married on 24 April 1915 to Kathleen Eleanor (died 1968), daughter of Arthur Prangley Wilson, a mining engineer. They had three sons: Sir (John) Peter Mills Tizard, who became a professor of paediatrics at the University of London and Regius Professor of Physic at Oxford (1916–1993); Richard Henry Tizard (1917–2005), an engineer and senior tutor at Churchill College, Cambridge; and David (born 1922), a general practitioner in London.