In 1953, he joined the University of Liverpool, gaining a first-class honours degree in 1956 followed by a PhD in 1959 under Alec Merrison and Hugh Muirhead. He won a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to work on Liverpool's 380 MeV, 1.83m (72 inch) synchrocyclotron, the world's second-largest at the time. The team's work confirmed parity violation in muon capture.