Wilfrid Bennett ‘WB’ Lewis was a research fellow at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge University from 1930 to 1939 working on particle physics with John Cockcroft.  Early in 1939 Watson-Watt persuaded Cockcroft to release Lewis to join the RDF team (Radio Direction Finding later 'radar') at Bawdsey to manage the research programme for AP 'Jimmy' Rowe.  At the outbreak of war he moved with the research station - first to Dundee and then to Worth Matravers.

Lewis was an exceedingly competent scientist and would visit the research teams for detailed discussions about their research programmes.  He was very good at suggesting effective ways for the research teams to progress.

In around August 1940, it was Lewis who proposed the idea for a doppler radar to help distinguish between ships (slow) and planes (fast) moving targets at the clifftop on St Aldhelms head in what was probably the first pulsed doppler radar (see 'innovation' at bottom of this page). 

In 1940 he also persuaded Rowe, the superintendent of the establishment, to assign the high calibre scientists who were arriving to research into high frequency radars.  This work proceeded 'under wraps' as it was against instructions from headquarters to focus on 1½ metre radars.  This decision paid off and led to the development of centimetric radar spurred on by the invention of the cavity magnetron.

At the end of the war Lewis briefly took over from Rowe as chief superintendent of TRE.  He tried to get approval to move the establishment from Malvern (where it then was) to a site near a major university such as Oxford.  His idea was to create a centre for electronics research close to an academic centre, but this idea came to nothing.

He also thought that the future of electronics research lay in better understanding of materials and their properties - which led him to start the Physics department at TRE.  This idea proved well founded and resulted in the development of liquid crystals, semiconductor infra red detectors and Geoffrey Dummer's pioneering proposal for the development of integrated circuits.

In 1946 WB Lewis went to Canada to lead the Canadian nuclear power programme in Chalk River, Ontario - and his success there is well documented in his biography (see below) and elsewhere.

Wilfrid Bennett ‘WB’ Lewis CBE FRS
24 June 1908 - 10 Jan 1987