Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees 1869-1959
Scottish pioneer of atomic and nuclear physics, and Nobel Prize winner

He was born in Glencorse, near Edinburgh. Educated at Manchester and at Cambridge, where he later became Professor of Natural Philosophy (1925-34), he was noted for his study of atmospheric electricity, one by-product of which was the successful protection from lightning of Britain's wartime barrage balloons. His greatest achievement was to devise the 'cloud chamber' method of marking the track of alpha-particles and electrons. The movement and interaction of atoms could thus be followed and photographed. The principle was also used by Donald Glaser to develop the 'bubble chamber'. In 1927 he shared with Arthur Compton the Nobel Prize for physics, and in 1937 he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.