From 1948 to 1976 he worked at the Wheatstone Physics Laboratory at King's College London. During this period he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (1959), Wheatstone Professor of Physics (1962) and Dean of the Faculty of Science (1966 to 1968).
At King's College London he was a pioneer of identifying Rydberg series ultra-violet absorption spectra. He was encouraged by his head of department (the Wheatstone Professor) to look at many substances with spectroscopic techniques, and at the time there was much interest in the structure and function of DNA and proteins. It was through his work with infra-red absorption spectroscopy that the alignment of the hydrogen bonds of the DNA base pairs, relative to the DNA fibre axis, was found.