Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson CH (February 14, 1869 – November 15, 1959) was a Scottish physicist.
He was born in the parish of Glencorse, Midlothian to a farmer, John Wilson, and his mother Annie Clerk Harper. After his father died in 1873, his family moved to Manchester. He was educated at Owen's College, studying biology with the intent to become a physician. He then went to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he became interested in physics and chemistry.
He thereafter became particularly interested in meteorology, and in 1893 he began to study clouds and their properties. He worked for some time at the observatory on Ben Nevis, where he made observations of cloud formation. He then tried to reproduce this effect on a smaller scale in the laboratory in Cambridge, expanding humid air within a sealed container. He later experimented with the creation of cloud trails in his chamber caused by ions and radiation. For the invention of the cloud chamber he received the Nobel Prize in 1927.
He married Jessie Fraser in 1908, the daughter of a minister from Glasgow, and the couple had four children. He died near Edinburgh, surrounded by his family.
The Wilson crater on the Moon is co-named for him, Alexander Wilson and Ralph Elmer Wilson.
The Wilson Society, the natural sciences society of Sidney Sussex College, is also named for him.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Isaac Asimov, 2nd ed., Doubleday & C., Inc., ISBN 0-385-17771-2.
External link
Template:UK-physicist-stub Template:Scotland-bio-stub
| Nobel Prize in Physics Laureates | |
|---|---|
Jean Perrin (1926) • Arthur Compton / Charles Wilson (1927) • Owen Richardson (1928) • Louis de Broglie (1929) • C. V. Raman (1930) • Werner Heisenberg (1932) • Erwin Schrödinger / Paul Dirac (1933) • James Chadwick (1935) • Victor Hess / Carl Anderson (1936) • Clinton Davisson / George Thomson (1937) • Enrico Fermi (1938) • Ernest Lawrence (1939) • Otto Stern (1943) • Isidor Rabi (1944) • Wolfgang Pauli (1945) • Percy Bridgman (1946) • Edward Appleton (1947) • Patrick Blackett (1948) • Hideki Yukawa (1949) • Cecil Powell (1950) | |
bg:Чарлз Уилсън ca:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson cs:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson de:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson es:Charles Wilson fr:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson io:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson id:C.T.R. Wilson it:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson hu:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson nl:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson ja:チャールズ・ウィルソン no:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson oc:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson pl:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson pt:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson ru:Вильсон, Чарлз Томсон Риз sl:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson fi:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson tr:Charles Thomson Rees Wilson zh:查尔斯·汤姆森·里斯·威耳孙
