Sir Colin Fielding CB

SIR COLIN FIELDING

Combining remarkable scientific and management abilities, Colin Fielding held several senior scientific government posts including chief scientist for the Royal Navy and director of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.
His education at Heaton Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne was followed by the award of a degree in physics by Durham University where he also studied geology, a lifetime interest.
He started work with the British Scientific Instruments Research Association, since 1918 the representative industrial body dealing with the application of science to the manufacture of scientific instruments. He moved in 1949 to the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern where he worked for sixteen years. During this period, which saw the exciting transition from ‘glass valve’ to solid state and transistor technologies, he was involved in the resulting explosion of applications, including advanced high power magnetrons and klystrons, short-wave military radars for surveillance, anti-air warfare, missile detection and guidance as well as a number of more peaceful programmes concerned with air traffic control and meteorology.
In 1965 he was appointed director of electronics research and development under Frank Cousins and subsequently Tony Benn in Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Ministry of Technology, founded in October 1964 with the intention to guide and stimulate a major national effort to bring advanced technology and new processes into industry.
He returned to Malvern in 1968 for five years as head of the electronics department, involved in such projects as liquid crystal displays and laser radar. Malvern continued to win Queen’s Awards for Industry.
In 1973 he was a student at the prestigious Royal College of Defence Studies in Belgrave Square, followed by appointment as director of scientific and technical intelligence in the Ministry of Defence, a Cold War job evaluating Warsaw Pact military capabilities and where their research programmes might be leading.
Then followed directorship of the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment on Portsdown Hill where he was responsible for research, development, design and trial of equipment and techniques in communications, radar missile control, and electronic warfare countermeasures as well as the material and personnel management issues of such a large organisation.
Fielding was the navy’s chief scientist from 1978 to 1980 before being appointed in charge of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, also with the responsibilities of deputy chief of defence procurement (nuclear). 1981 saw the start of the Greenham Common Peace Camps and heightened worries about the threat of nuclear attack, making Aldermaston more than usually sensitive to public opinion and requiring squeaky-clean attitudes to safety and control of emissions. He was appointed CB in 1981.
His final tour was Controller of Research Establishments and Nuclear Programmes in the Ministry of Defence. He was knighted in 1986 upon retirement.
He was the author of several learned papers to the Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and Institution of Electronic and Radio Engineers. From 1988 he was chairman of Microturbo Ltd and a director of Cray Research (UK)
Fielding believed that hard work was the key to achievement. Colleagues recall his intellectual brilliance but also his gentle nature. Besides geology, his enthusiasms included yachting, badminton and the music of Frank Sinatra.
His wife Gillian, whom he married in 1953, died in 2005. Their daughter survives him.

Sir Colin Fielding CB, Controller of R&D Establishments,
Ministry of Defence 1982-86, was born on December 23, 1926.
He died on October 6 aged 83.