Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees
Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees (1869-1959), Scottish physicist and Nobel laureate. Wilson invented the cloud chamber , which gave the first pictures of the paths of subatomic particles (see Elementary Particles ) and became an essential tool in the fields of atomic and meteorological physics (see Atom ; Meteorology ). For his discovery of the method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by the condensation of water vapor, Wilson shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics with American physicist Arthur Holly Compton . Wilson was born in Glencorse in the former county of Midlothian, Scotland. He received a B.S. degree from Owens College (now the Victoria Institute of Manchester) in England in 1887 and a B.A. degree from the University of Cambridge in 1892. After teaching at Bradford Grammar School in Bradford, England, for four years Wilson returned to Cambridge in 1896 as a researcher and remained there, eventually as a professor, until he retired in 1936. He remained ...