MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET• 345president of the council, who was himself a physical chemist whose
PhD thesis at Leipzig University, coincidentally, had been on the
chemistry of uranium. A technical subcommittee, consisting of
Peierls, Chadwick, Simon, and von Halban, was created to take the
research into the development stage and met for the first time on 6
November 1941.
By this time ICI and Metropolitan-Vickers had taken the Tube
Alloys project from the realm of the theoretical into practical, indus-
trial application. The problem of isotope separation was being ad-
dressed at ICI’s Metals Division at Witton, just outside Birmingham,
where the Research Manager, S. S. Smith, was engaged on the manu-
facture of membranes that would be components of the equipment
being constructed by Metropolitan-Vickers in Manchester and ICI at
Billingham. The company’s General Chemicals Division built a ura-
nium refinery at Widnes, and its production of 200-pound ingots of
the pure metal were delivered to Witton for final fabrication. At Ox-
ford, Franz Simon’s small research team grew to almost 40 and occu-
pied much of the Clarendon Laboratory as well as Jesus College’s
chemistry laboratory, with additional work on isotope separation
being undertaken by Dr. Arms in the Physics Laboratory at Bir-
mingham. The membranes themselves, developed at Lund Humph-
ries in Bradford, were put into production at Sun Engraving in
Watford, and the entire enterprise was focused atRhydymwyn, near
Mold in North Wales, where the various components were assem-
bled.MAUDE, JOHN.An Old Bailey judge, John Maude joinedMI5in
1939, having been called to the bar in 1925 following Eton and
Christ Church, Oxford. In 1940 he was responsible for the investiga-
tion that resulted in the arrest of AdmiralEmile Muselier. After the
war he was elected the Conservative MP for Exeter, a seat he retained
until 1951.
MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET.Somerset Maugham was already a
well-known and successful writer when, in September 1915, he was
approached by Sir John Wallinger with the suggestion that, with his
knowledge of German and French, his occupation would provide
useful cover for an intelligence officer operating in a neutral country.