Dr Alan Marmaduke Wetherell (1932-1998)
Alan was born in South Shields, one of the great-grandsons of Marmaduke Wetherell and Bessie Cay. He studied at Liverpool University from 1950, completing a doctorate with Professor James Macdonald Cassels from 1954 to 1957. He married Alison Dunn in Liverpool in 1957, then spent some time at California Institute of Technology before moving to CERN (CERN stands for Conseil Européen pour la Recherc
he Nucléaire, which translates from French as the European Council for Nuclear Research. It is based near Geneva in Switzerland) in September 1959. Alison and Alan had one son, Carl, but Alison died in 1974. He married Linda Harwick in Geneva in 1996 and retired from CERN in 1997, dying suddenly in 1998. He had been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1971.
A more detailed account of his life and work can be found in this Rotal Society biographical memoir by his colleague and friend James Allaby, accessible as a PDF via the link below.