Brilliant scientist's geography error sparks High Court battle over will

Trailblazer: scientist Michael Crowley-Milling
Champion news
Paul Cheston26 November 2015

A brilliant scientist who helped to invent the world’s first computer touchscreens started a £2.1 million High Court battle by making a schoolboy error over geography.

Nuclear physicist Michael Crowley-Milling, who died childless aged 95 in 2012, stipulated in his will that most of his wealth “within the United Kingdom” should go to the Royal Society.

However, by the time of his death half his £2.1 million fortune — almost £1 million in cash — was not in the UK but in banks on Jersey and the Isle of Man.

The islands are part of the British Isles — but not the UK. That oversight led to an unprecedented legal battle between his relatives and the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific institution.

Now the High Court has awarded the money to the Society after finding that “highly intelligent” Mr Crowley-Milling had simply made a common error.

The court heard that the scientist had played key roles in developing particle acceleration prior to the building of the Large Hadron Collider and also the touchscreen technology that paved the way for smartphones and tablets.

He was a collector of vintage cars — one of them an extremely rare 1931 Alfa Romeo 8C, which he sold for £2 million a few years before his death.

His only surviving relatives were the children and grandchildren of brother Denis, a Second World War pilot and friend of flying ace Douglas Bader.

In a 2009 will Mr Crowley-Milling left money to buy his carer a home and £400,000 to his relatives — the rest of his estate going to the Royal Society.

But when the mistake in his will was discovered his family laid claim to the offshore £1 million. They argued that such a brilliant man must have known what he was doing and clearly wanted the cash to go to them.

Lawyers for the Society insisted he wanted it to have the £1 million and had made a simple geographical error.

Mr Justice Nugee backed the Society, despite evidence that Mr Crowley- Milling had “fallen out with it”.

The judge said: “Even though he may have changed his mind towards the end of his life, he didn’t do anything about it and he didn’t change his will.”

On the geographical error, he added: “Lawyers may understand the technical meaning of the term ‘UK’. But there is no evidence that laymen, even highly intelligent ones, would have grasped the difference between the UK, Great Britain and the British Isles.”

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