Walter Stiles, 1886-1966

Walter Stiles was born on 23 August 1886 at Shepherd’s Bush, Hammersmith. He was the eldest child of the family and had one sister born three years later. Both his parents were Londoners. His father, Walter Stiles (1861-1938), was an artist who worked in wood and clay and whose work ornamented many large houses in London and elsewhere. His mother was Elizabeth Sarah Stiles ( née Dury; 1859-1943). His grandfather, James Stiles, was a corn merchant of Pimlico and the family appears previously to have been long settled in Kent in the neighbourhood of Cobham. James’s brother, Walter Stiles, at Cobham, was the grandfather of Walter Stanley Stiles, F.R.S. On 7 July 1920 Walter Stiles married Edith Ethel May Harwood at St Mary’s Church, Stamford Brook, Hammersmith. Her parents came from the West Country, her father from Wiltshire and her mother from Dorset. There were two children; Walter born in 1922 and Ruth Mary born in 1927. The son graduated in physics at the University of Birmingham and now works on irrigation problems as a member of the staff of the Grassland Research Institute, Hurley, Berkshire. The daughter, after graduating at Birmingham in Spanish and Portuguese, went on to the University of Madrid and is now a lecturer in Spanish at Torquay Technical College. Stiles’s education commenced at the public elementary school in Westville Road, Shepherd’s Bush (1890-1897). He then, with the assistance of L.C.C. junior and intermediate scholarships, went to Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith, of which he afterwards wrote in enthusiastic terms. Very much, he said, was due to the wisdom of the headmaster, the Reverend C. J. Smith, who, from a modest beginning in 1895, raised the school to a leading position among the grammar schools of London. Personally, he felt that he owed a great deal to the teaching of the Mathematics and Senior Science Master, G. M. Grace, who was a source of inspiration to his pupils. Contemporary with Stiles were Harold Spencer Jones, later F.R.S. and Astronomer Royal; G. K. Livers, afterwards Professor of Mathematics at University College, Cardiff; and D. Orson Wood, for many years an Editor of Science Progress .