My father, Joseph Woodhouse, who has died aged 97, was the chief lighting engineer for Sheffield, a lay preacher and trustee in the Unitarian church, and a lifelong pacifist who was a conscientious objector in the second world war.

Joseph was born in Sheffield to Charles, a steel roller, and his wife, Ellen (nee Coole). The Unitarian minister had to persuade Charles to let his son take up a scholarship to Central grammar school against the expectation that he would leave education at 14 to earn a living.

He still had to leave aged 16, when his headmaster got him a job in the Sheffield lighting department. After night-school courses in electrical engineering and public administration he became a public lighting engineer, rising to be Sheffield’s deputy engineer by 1949. During the 1950s he worked for Derby, before returning to Sheffield in 1960 as the chief lighting engineer. He masterminded the Sheffield Christmas lights, inspiring the current head of Blackpool illuminations, Richard Ryan, then a young boy living in Sheffield. Ryan says: “Sheffield’s lights were at that time the best in the country, and were a source of pride and a statement of hope for the much-bombed city.”

After serving as treasurer, in 1971 Joseph was elected president of his professional body, the Association of Public Lighting Engineers.

Joseph became involved in the Unitarian church as a child through the boy scouts in which he progressed to scoutmaster, and became a lay preacher during the second world war, cycling out to the villages around Sheffield. He was an active member of the church, remaining a lay preacher for the next 50 years, and taking on responsibilities such as secretary, chairman and trustee in that time.

In the 1930s, in light of the aftermath of the first world war, Joseph became a member of the Peace Pledge Union and eventually a conscientious objector when the second world war broke out. During the war he volunteered as a human guinea pig in medical experiments to find the causes and cures for scabies and other conditions.

Joseph met Kathleen West through the social life of Unity church in Sheffield, and they married there in 1945. They had four children, Peter, Graham Jane and me, who all went on to a university education. Graham eventually became a Buddhist monk.

Kathleen died in 2011. Joseph is survived by his children, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.