Butler was born in Reading on 20 May 1922, the son of Charles Hannington James Butler, a clerk and buyer to a local wholesale grocer, and his wife Olive Pembroke. He attended both Reading School and the University of Reading, becoming both a Bachelor of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy there. He was appointed assistant lecturer in physics at the University of Manchester in 1945, and lecturer in 1947. In the same year he married Kathleen Betty Collins. They had two daughters. He died in Glenfield Hospital, near Leicester on 30 June 1999.