OBITUARY

SIR MAURICE DEAN

Civil Service air warfare team

Sir Maurice Dean, KCB, KCIOG, who had a distinguished Civil Service career initially in the Air Ministry and later in the Department of Education and Science. and the Ministry of Technology, died on April 7. He was 71.

Maurice Dean. was born on September 16, 1906, and educated at St Olave's School. He then followed his elder brother, later Professor W. R. Dean, to Trinity College, Cambridge, and like him, took Firsts in both parts of the Mathematical Tripos. He also wvon the Mayhew Prize. He had thought of a career in engineering, but this was the time of the depression and prospects were poor. He therefore took the Civil Service examination in 1929 and passed in at the head of the list. He opted for the Air Ministry, a department which, in the years before the war, nwas to attract an exceptionally gifted entry.

Dean's first job in the Air Ministry was connected with the development of airships, and he wvas lucky not to have travelled in 'the ill-fated R 101 on its journey to India. Shortly afterwards he became Private Secretary to Sir Edward Ellington, the Chief of the Air Staff, and his successor, Sir Cyril Newall, and this was the start of a close association with the Air Staff which lasted until the end of the War. It was also the start of many friendships wvith RAF officers at all levels, notably with the then Group Captain A. T. Harris, who in Dean's private Valhalla occupied a place second only to Portal.

During the many crises which preceded the outbreak of War, and during the War itself, Dean was well-qualified by his scientific background (much envied by some of his colleagues), his cool head and clarity of presentation, and, not least, his warm sympathies, to play a key part in air force development. He was undoubtedly very happy in the many contacts which the work gave him at a time when air force. officers, scientists md civil servants were being blended into a war-winning team, which could more than hold its own with the other Services and witL its partners from across the Atlantic.

It was during this period, too, that he married Anie Gibson, wvho wvas to give him so much understanding, support and happiness in the years -ich followed They had one son and one daughter.

In 1946, by which time it was clear that he must broaden his experience if he was to rise to

the. highest ranks in the Civil Service, Dean followed Sir Arthur Street to the Control Commission and the German Section of the Foreign Office, where he was Deputy UnderSecretary of State under Ernest Bevin. In 1948 he moved to the Ministry of Defence, and in 1952, after a short spell at the Treasury, to the Board of Trade. In 1955 he was the obvious choice...