Early life and studies

He was the elder child of William Williams, a physics teacher and later divisional inspector of schools for north and mid-Wales. His mother was Mary Ellen Wynn, known as Nell, daughter of Robert Wynn, a shopkeeper at Llanrwst

Llanrwst

Llanrwst is a small town and community on the A470 road and the River Conwy in Conwy County Borough, Wales. It takes its name from the 5th century to 6th century Saint Grwst, and the original parish church in Cae Llan was replaced by the 12th-century church....

. Liberal in politics and a fluent Welsh speaker, Wynn-Williams married a schoolteacher, Annie Eiluned James (b. 1907/8), on 12 August 1943 in London; they had two sons.

He was known as C. E. Wynn-Williams from university onwards. His education was at Grove Park School, Wrexham

Wrexham

Wrexham is a town in Wales. It is the administrative centre of the wider Wrexham County Borough, and the largest town in North Wales, located in the east of the region. It is situated between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley close to the border with Cheshire, England...

, and from 1920 at the University College of North Wales

Bangor University

Bangor University is a university based in the city of Bangor in the county of Gwynedd in North Wales-United Kingdom.It was officially known for most of its history as the University College of North Wales...

, Bangor

Bangor, Gwynedd

Bangor is a city in Gwynedd, north west Wales, and one of the smallest cities in Britain. It is a university city with a population of 13,725 at the 2001 census, not including around 10,000 students at Bangor University. Including nearby Menai Bridge on Anglesey, which does not however form part of...

 from which he graduated in 1923. He stayed on there to undertake research work on electrical instrumentation, and gained the degree of MSc from the University of Wales

University of Wales

The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...

 in 1924.

Pre-war Research

In October 1925 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 having been awarded a University of Wales open fellowship. Initially he continued research into short electric waves at the Cavendish Laboratory

Cavendish Laboratory

The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences. It was opened in 1874 as a teaching laboratory....

 under the supervision of Sir Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics...

, and was awarded the degree of PhD for this work in 1929.

Wynn-Williams' most significant work in this period, however, was in the development of electronic instrumentation for use in radioactivity and nuclear physics. Like many scientists at that time he was a wireless

Wireless

Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...

 enthusiast. In 1926 he employed his electronics skills to construct an amplifier using thermionic valves

Vacuum tube

In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...

 (vacuum tubes) for very small electrical currents. It was realized that such devices could be used in the detection and counting of subatomic particle

Subatomic particle

In physics or chemistry, subatomic particles are the smaller particles composing nucleons and atoms. There are two types of subatomic particles: elementary particles, which are not made of other particles, and composite particles...

s in the nuclear disintegration experiments then being undertaken by Rutherford who encouraged him to devote his attention to the construction of a reliable valve amplifier and methods of registering and counting particles.

There followed a series of brilliant contributions to the armamentarium of nuclear physics. In 1929–30, with H. M. Cave and F. A. B. Ward he designed and constructed a counting device using thyratron

Thyratron

A thyratron is a type of gas filled tube used as a high energy electrical switch and controlled rectifier. Triode, tetrode and pentode variations of the thyratron have been manufactured in the past, though most are of the triode design...

s in conjunction with a mechanical counter. By 1931 a valve amplifier and thyratron-based automatic counting system were in regular use in the Cavendish Laboratory. Wynn-Williams' amplifier played an important part in James Chadwick's

James Chadwick

Sir James Chadwick CH FRS was an English Nobel laureate in physics awarded for his discovery of the neutron....

 discovery of the neutron

Neutron

The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...

 in 1932, and in numerous other experiments. In 1932 Wynn-Williams published details of his thyratron-based scale-of-two counter, which allowed particles to be counted at much higher rates than previously. His devices became crucial unifying elements in the hardware of the emergent discipline of nuclear physics, as they opened up new avenues of research. They were widely copied in laboratories in Europe and the United States, often with readily given advice from Wynn-Williams.

In 1935 Wynn-Williams was appointed assistant lecturer in physics at Imperial College, London

Imperial College London

Imperial College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, specialising in science, engineering, business and medicine...

. Continuing his work on electronic instrumentation he contributed to the development of nuclear physics at Imperial under G. P. Thomson

George Paget Thomson

Sir George Paget Thomson, FRS was an English physicist and Nobel laureate in physics recognised for his discovery with Clinton Davisson of the wave properties of the electron by electron diffraction.-Biography:...

.

Wartime

On the eve of the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Wynn-Williams, like many of his scientific contemporaries, was recruited to work on the developing discipline of radio detection and ranging (RADAR

Radar

Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

) at the Telecommunications Research Establishment

Telecommunications Research Establishment

The Telecommunications Research Establishment was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force during World War II and the years that followed. The name was...

, later the Royal Radar Establishment

Royal Radar Establishment

The name Royal Radar Establishment was given to the existing Radar Research Establishment following a visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Both names were abbreviated to RRE. The establishment had been formed, under its first name, in 1953 by merging the Telecommunications Research Establishment ...

, Malvern.

On 1 February 1942, the allied success in breaking German naval Enigma messages suffered a serious setback. This was due to the adoption, for the North Atlantic U-boat traffic, of an Enigma machine with an additional rotor — the four-wheel Enigma. This increased the time required of the Turing

Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...

-designed Bombe

Bombe

The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...

 machines by a factor of 26. Higher speed bombes were therefore needed and Wynn-Williams was called in to contribute to one of the streams of development of high-speed Bombes. The Post Office team developed a Bombe attachment for a standard three-wheel Bombe containing high speed wheels and an electronic sensing unit. It was attached to the Bombe by a very thick cable and was dubbed the Cobra Bombe. Twelve were made at the Mawdsley engineering factory in Dursley

Dursley

Dursley is a market town in Gloucestershire, England. It is under the North East flank of Stinchcombe Hill , and about 6 km South East of the River Severn. The town is adjacent with Cam which, though a village, is a community of double the size...

, Gloucestershire, but turned out to be unreliable, so the other stream of development at the British Tabulating Machine Company

British Tabulating Machine Company

The British Tabulating Machine Company was a firm which manufactured and sold Hollerith unit record equipment and other data-processing equipment...

 at Letchworth

Letchworth

Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The town's name is taken from one of the three villages it surrounded - all of which featured in the Domesday Book. The land used was first purchased by Quakers who had intended to farm the...

 was preferred. Both machines were subsequently overshadowed by the great success of the US Navy Bombe

Bombe

The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...

s.

Towards the end of 1942, the previously experimental non-Morse

Morse

Morse can refer to:* Morse code, a method of coding messages into long and short beeps-Places:Canada* Morse , Saskatchewan* Morse, Saskatchewan, a hamlet* Morse No...

 transmissions from teleprinter

Teleprinter

A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...

 cipher machines were being received in greater numbers by the British Signals Intelligence collection sites

Y-stations

Y-stations were British Signals Intelligence collection sites initially established during World War I and later used during World War II. These sites were operated by a range of agencies including the Army, Navy and RAF plus the Foreign Office , General Post Office and Marconi Company receiving...

. The one using the Lorenz SZ 40/42

Lorenz cipher

The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42A and SZ42B were German rotor cipher machines used by the German Army during World War II. They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin. They implemented a Vernam stream cipher...

, code-named Tunny at the Government Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...

, was used for high-level traffic between German High Command and field commanders. A young chemistry graduate, Bill Tutte

W. T. Tutte

William Thomas Tutte, OC, FRS, known as Bill Tutte, was a British, later Canadian, codebreaker and mathematician. During World War II he made a brilliant and fundamental advance in Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a major German code system, which had a significant impact on the Allied...

 worked out how it could, in theory be broken. He took the idea to his boss, the mathematician Max Newman

Max Newman

Maxwell Herman Alexander "Max" Newman, FRS was a British mathematician and codebreaker.-Pre–World War II:Max Newman was born Maxwell Neumann in Chelsea, London, England, on 7 February 1897...

, who realised that the only feasible way to apply the method, was by automating it. Knowing of Wynn-Williams' work on electronic counters at Cambridge, he called for his help. He worked with a team from the Post Office Research Station

Post Office Research Station

The Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, London, was first established in 1921 and opened by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1933.In 1943 the world's first programmable electronic computer, Colossus Mark 1 was built by Tommy Flowers and his team, followed in 1944 and 1945 by nine...

 at Dollis Hill which later included Tommy Flowers

Tommy Flowers

Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers, MBE was an English engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.-Early life:...

. They constructed a machine to do this that was dubbed Heath Robinson

Heath Robinson (codebreaking machine)

Heath Robinson was a machine used by British codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II to solve messages in the German teleprinter cipher used by the Lorenz SZ40/42 cipher machine; the cipher and machine were called "Tunny" by the codebreakers, who named different German teleprinter...

 after the cartoonist who designed fantastical machines. The series of Robinson machines were forerunners of the ten Colossus machines

Colossus computer

Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...

, the world's first programmable digital electronic computers.

Postwar

Returning to Imperial College after the war, Wynn-Williams devoted himself largely to the development of practical undergraduate teaching, where he was an accomplished and much liked instructor. He became lecturer and ultimately reader in physics at Imperial. In 1957 he received the Physical Society's Duddell medal

Duddell Medal and Prize

The Duddell Medal and Prize was a prize awarded annually by the Institute of Physics in the memory of William du Bois Duddell, the inventor of the electromagnetic oscillograph. The medal was instituted by the Council of The Physical Society in 1923. Between 1961 and 1973 the prize was awarded in...

 in recognition of his work on the scale-of-two counter. Like most who worked at Bletchley Park, Wynn-Williams never received official recognition for his wartime work, and he always observed the oath of secrecy surrounding it, although he retained an interest in codes and puzzles throughout his life. Professor R. V. Jones

Reginald Victor Jones

Reginald Victor Jones, CH CB CBE FRS, was a British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in -Education:...

, UK Government Scientific Intelligence advisor in the second World War, wrote in Nature in 1981:
He and his wife moved to Wales after his retirement in 1970.