Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees (1869-1959: Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Cambridge, Nobel Prize winner)

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson was born on 14 February 1869 at the farmhouse of Crosshouse in the Pentland Hills. Following the death of his father four years later, the family moved to Manchester where Wilson later attended Owens College. There he studied biology with the intention of pursuing a career in medicine. Upon graduating he obtained an entrance scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, although he had in fact applied for a scholarship at Christ's College. Wilson graduated with distinction in 1892 and after a brief spell teaching in a Midlands grammar school, he returned to the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, becoming a Clerk Maxwell Scholar in 1895.

Following observations made in 1894 at the meteorological observatory in the summit of Ben Nevis, he began experimenting to produce clouds artificially. In 1896 he used an X-ray tube developed by Everrett in the Cavendish Laboratory to show conclusively the condensation occurring in dust-free air sufficiently expanded was the result of charged atoms, later called ions. He considered that it should be possible to reveal the tracks of ionising particles and after years of experimental work he produced in 1911 the cloud chamber, described by Lord Rutherford as '"the most original apparatus in the whole history of physics". In this instrument the tracking of atoms, or sub-atomic particles, were shown as trails of tiny water drops. The pictures he produced using the cloud chamber were of the highest quality and the cloud chamber itself went on to play a key role in the development of nuclear physics.

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