A professor who worked in a university building linked with a radiation scare has died from cancer.

Tom Whiston, 70, from Brighton, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September.

Professor Whiston is the sixth person who worked in the University of Manchester’s Rutherford Building to develop terminal cancer.

The building once housed the laboratories used by physicist Ernest Rutherford, who worked with radioactive materials.

Professor Whiston and two of his former colleagues – Dr Hugh Wagner, 62, and Dr Arthur Reader, 69 – all died from pancreatic cancer.

A colleague of Dr Wagner, John Clark, died of a brain tumour in the 1990s. Computer assistant Vanessa Santos-Leitao, 25, also died of a brain tumour in February 2008.

Relatives of Moira Joy Hayward, who died of cancer in 1984 aged 48 and had worked in the Rutherford Building when she was younger, also fear her death is linked to those of the scientists.

The university has asked Professor David Coggon, an expert in workplace disease at the University of Southampton, to investigate the cluster of deaths.

University bosses insist there is no evidence of any risk to staff.

Professor Whiston, an expert in science and technology policy,had been based in the former Rutherford rooms for a number of years. He left the University of Manchester in 1976 and moved to Brighton to take up a senior research fellowship at the science and technology research unit at the University of Sussex.

He stayed at the university for almost 25 years until his retirement.

Liz Graham, a Manchester solicitor acting on behalf of some of the families, said she had spoken with members of Professor Whiston’s family since his death.

She said: “Professor Whiston died on April 11 at home in Brighton. I met with him earlier in his illness. He was a very well respected academic.

“Pancreatic cancer is quite a rare form of cancer. Questions need to be asked about whether there is a link.”

In December Professor Whiston said he wished he had been told of the potential danger of working at the Rutherford Building.

He said: “I would like to have been informed as early as possible, because I would have retired earlier and written more books.”