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LORD CHRISTOPHER HINTON
OF BANKSIDE
1 901-1 983
BY WALKER L. CISLER
L ORD HINTON OF BANKSIDE, deputy chairman, Electricity
Supply Research Council at the Electricity Council, died in
London, England, on June 22, 1983, at the age of eighty-
two. He was a highly respected, internationally known en-
gineer and executive as a result of his activities in the World
Energy Conference, of which he was honorary chairman of
the International Executive Council, and his pioneering
work in nuclear energy and power systems engineering.
In the August 1983 issue of the British magazine Atom,
the following statement appeared:
With the death of Lord Hinton at the age of 82, Britain has lost
one of its great contemporary engineers, and his passing brings a
measure of sadness to all those who were privileged to serve him in
the early days of nuclear power in this country. A brilliant technolo-
gist and outstanding administrator, his strength stemmed largely from
an unswerving faith in what he was doing, backed with a steely resolve
and a broad mastering of the engineering disciplines.
He was born on May 12, 1901, at Tisbury, Wiltshire, En-
gland, and educated at Cambridge University, graduating
from Trinity College in 1926 with Ist Class Honors. He
was a member of seven of the principal engineering institutes
in Britain and an honorary member of the American Soci-
ety of Mechanical Engineers. He was an honorary fellow,
135
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136
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Trinity College, Cambridge, 1957, and a fellow of the Royal
Society, 1954. Hinton received honorary doctor's degrees
from five universities in Britain, the Albert Medal and the
Order of Merit among many other awards, and the Imperial
Order of the Rising Sun (2nd Classy, 1966. He was Knighted
in 1951, became a Knight Commander of the British Empire
in 1957, and a Life Peer in 1965. He was chancellor of the
University of Bath from 1966 to 1980, special adviser to the
World Bank, and from 1962 to 1968 chairman of the Inter-
national Council and British National Committee, World
Energy Conference. He was elected a foreign associate of
the National Academy of Engineering in 1976.
Hinton had a combination of abilities that made him an
unusually effective engineer. He was an excellent engineer
with a full knowledge of fundamentals; he was a good organizer
of large technical projects; he was far-seeing and most persuasive
on matters of technical policy; and, perhaps most important
of all, he firmly believed in the importance of whatever
project he undertook, which gave him the courage and
tenacity to see them successfully completed.
His employment began with Imperial Chemical Industries
(ICI), and at the age of twenty-nine he was appointed chief
engineer of the Alkali Groups. While at ICI, he was selected
to start building atomic power plants. How well he succeeded
is attested to by the completion of Britain's first four major
atomic plants in six years, a tremendous achievement by
today's standards. Beginning in 1946 at Risley with the
miscellaneous staff of twelve, he laid the foundations for
the Nuclear Power Center, which is among the largest and
best of its kind in the world.
Any tribute to Lord Hinton must make reference to his
founding role in fast breeder technology. The decision to
build the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) in ~954 showed his
far-sighted assessment of the major role fast reactors would
one day play. He personally visited Thurso, near the DFR
site, on several occasions to explain to the local people the
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LORD CHRISTOPHER HINTON
137
need for Dounreay, laying the foundation of overwhelming
local support for the fast reactor plants. In 1977 he re-
turned to Dounreay to shut down the DFR he helped to
conceive nearly twenty-five years earlier. DFR had fully
met the task for which it was built: to demonstrate that fast
reactors could be constructed and safely operated. Until
his death, Lord Hinton remained interested in the newer
Prototype Fast Reactor and the future development of the
fast breeder reactor system.
In 1957 he was appointed the first chairman of the Cen-
tral Electricity Generating Board of Great Britain, a position
he held until 1964. During that period, there was a vast
expansion of the electric power grid in England. In this
undertaking Lord Hinton exhibited most strongly his admin-
istrative as well as his technical abilities. His insistence
that safety and reliability were of first importance in a power
plant, whether fossil or nuclear, served the power industry
of Great Britain very well indeed. Equally of note were his
early concerns about the environment and pollution, which
led to his development of the Board's research activities.
In his retirement until his death, Lord Hinton was an active
deputy chairman of the industry's research council.
Hinton's principal activity in the international energy
field was through his long association with the WorIcl Power
Conference, now renamed the World Energy Conference.
Its purpose from the beginning was to bring together those
concerned, at a high international level, with the development
and use of all sources and forms of energy. This objective
was, and is still, mainly achieved by holding a congress
organized for a large and still growing number of countries.
In 1962 Hinton accepted the chairmanship of the British
National Committee of the World Energy Conference, and
in the same year he was elected to a six-year term as chair-
man of the Conference International Executive Committee.
He was in a large measure responsible for the high esteem
held throughtout the world for the World Energy Conference.
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
He was instrumental in changing the focus of the Confer-
ence from power only to the much wider scope of energy
as a whole.
Hinton's precise grasp of energy problems confronting
the developing countries and his ability to find practical
and acceptable engineering solutions to such problems won
him friends in many countries. His contributions to this
worthwhile effort will be long remembered.
Because of his unrelenting pursuit of excellence, he was
sometimes referred to as a technical autocrat. Yet, with a
gentle side to his character, he was very much a man for
his time and has left a void that will be difficult to fill not
only in his own country, but elsewhere as well. Even at
eighty-two, his remarks to students at the University of Bath,
of which he was the first chancellor, are indicative of his
optimism for the future and his oft-demonstratec} courage
in meeting head-on its problems: "You are going out into
a changing world . . . but all change is a challenge. ~ am
not offering you any pity. What ~ wish is that I was young
enough to share the challenge with you."
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
lord hinton
