Robert Rathbun Wilson (March 4, 1914–January 16, 2000) was an American physicist who was the youngest group leader of the Manhattan Project, a sculptor, and an architect of Fermi National Laboratory (Fermilab), where he was also the director from 1967-1978. March 4 is the 63rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (64th in leap years). ... 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... January 16 is the 16th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The word physicist should not be confused with physician, which means medical doctor. ... Control panels and operators for calutrons at the National Security Complex. ... Sculptor redirects here. ... Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory located in Batavia near Chicago, Illinois is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics, operated for the Department of Energy by the Universities Research Association (URA). ...

Wilson was born in Frontier, Wyoming in 1914. In 1932 he arrived at Ernest O. Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which was at that time blossoming into the top American site for both experimental and theoretical physics due to the efforts of Lawrence and J. Robert Oppenheimer. 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ... Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 - August 27, 1958) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate best known for his invention of the cyclotron. ... The Berkeley Lab is perched on a hill overlooking the Berkeley central campus and San Francisco Bay. ... University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, UCB, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California, USA to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate. ... Experimental physics is the part of physics that deals with experiments and observations, unlike theoretical physics. ... Theoretical physics attempts to understand the world by making a model of reality, used for rationalizing, explaining, predicting physical phenomena through a physical theory. There are three types of theories in physics; mainstream theories, proposed theories and fringe theories. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Physics sci. ... Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 - August 27, 1958) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate best known for his invention of the cyclotron. ... J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, served as the first director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, beginning in 1943. ...

But Wilson ran into friction with Lawrence's harsh frugality while working on his cyclotron and was fired twice from the Rad Lab. The first time, for losing a rubber seal in the 37-inch cyclotron which prevented its use in a demonstration to a potential donor; he was later rehired at Luis Alvarez's urging. However he soon melted a pair of pliers during a welding job, and was again fired. Though offered his job back, he decided instead to go to Princeton to work with Henry DeWolf Smyth. 60-inch cyclotron, circa 1939, showing beam of accelerated ions (perhaps protons or deuterons) escaping the accelerator and ionizing the surrounding air causing a blue glow. ... Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) of San Francisco, California, USA, was a famed physicist who worked at the University of California, Berkeley. ... Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. ... Henry DeWolf Smyth (May 1, 1898 – September 11, 1986) was an American physicist, diplomat, and a bureaucrat who played a number of key roles in the early development of nuclear energy. ...

At Princeton, Wilson eventually took over Smyth's project: an alternative approach to electromagnetic separation from Lawrence's Calutrons, for the purpose of separating the valuable light isotope of uranium from the immensely more common heavy one (a key step to producing an atomic bomb). By 1941 the project had produced a device called the "Isotron," which different from the Calutron as it used an electrical field to separate the uranium, not a magnetic one. A Calutron was a mass spectrometer used for separating the isotopes of uranium developed by Ernest O. Lawrence during the Manhattan Project. ... General Name, Symbol, Number Uranium, U, 92 Chemical series Actinides Period, Block 7, f Density, Hardness 19050 kg/m3, 6 Appearance silvery-white metal Atomic properties Atomic weight 238. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter. ... 1941 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

When Robert Oppenheimer's secret centralized laboratory for war research on the atomic bomb—Los Alamos—opened in 1943, Wilson was appointed as head of the Cyclotron Group (R-1) by Oppenheimer. Only in his late twenties, he was the youngest group leader in the experimental division. Los Alamos National Laboratory, aerial view from 1995. ... 1943 is a common year starting on Friday. ...

In 1945, when Nazi Germany surrendered, and the initial motivation for the crash atomic bomb project (the Manhattan Project) dissipated as it was discovered that the Nazi atomic research program was years behind, Wilson attempted to raise the question at the lab of whether they should continue with their work. News of this was met with an icy reception from General Leslie Groves, military head of the project. Control panels and operators for calutrons at the National Security Complex. ... Leslie Groves Leslie Richard Groves (August 17, 1896 - July 13, 1970) was a member of the United States Army who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and the primary military leader in charge of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in Albany, New...

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Wilson helped create the Association of Los Alamos Scientist (ALAS), which called for, with a scientists' petition, the international control of atomic energy. The petition was carried by Oppenheimer to Washington, D.C., eventually made its way to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and eventually President Harry S. Truman. Ironically the Russians may have seen it first—atomic spy Klaus Fuchs gave Harry Gold a copy which arrived in Moscow on October 29, 1945, and was noted upon that the physicists' "feelings of distrust toward the government are very strong." Main keep of Hiroshima Castle The city of Hiroshima (広島市; -shi) is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Japan. ... Megane-bashi, the Eyeglasses Bridge Nagasaki  listen (長崎市; -shi) is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture located at the south-western coast of Kyushu, Japan. ... Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United... Henry L. Stimson Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American statesman. ... For the victim of Mt. ... Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs (b. ... Harry Gold born 12 December 1910 in Philadelphia, Pennsyvania. ... Saint Basils Cathedral Moscow (Russian/Cyrillic: Москва́, pronunciation: Maskvá  listen), capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva, and encompassing 1097. ... October 29 is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 63 days remaining. ...

Wilson at the Fermilab groundbreaking ceremony

Wilson helped form the Federation of American Scientists after the war and served as its chairman in 1946. He accepted an offer to go to Harvard for a brief period (most of which was spent at Berkeley), and went to Cornell University in 1947 where he worked at the Cornell Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. His work there eventually led to the construction of a particle accelerator, the Cornell Electron-positron Storage Ring (CESR), now located at the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory. Robert Wilson picture from FermiLabs website (http://www-visualmedia. ... The Federation of American Scientists is a non-profit organization dedicated to the proper use of science and technology for the benefit of mankind. ... 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Harvard, see Harvard (disambiguation) Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... 1947 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In 1967 he took a leave of absence from Cornell to assume directorship of the not-yet-created National Accelerator Laboratory which was to create the largest particle accelerator of its day at Batavia, Illinois. In 1969, Wilson was called to justify the multimillion-dollar machine to the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Bucking the trend of the day, Wilson emphasized it had nothing at all to do with national security, rather: 1967 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Batavia is a city located in Kane County, Illinois and DuPage County, Illinois. ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ...

It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.

Thanks to Wilson's leadership—in a full-steam ahead style very much adopted from Lawrence, despite his firings—the facility was completed on time and under budget. Dubbed the Fermi Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab for short), after famed Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the facility centered around a four-mile circumference, 400 GeV accelerator. Unlike most government facilities, Fermilab was designed to be aesthetically pleasing. Wilson wanted Fermilab to be an appealing place to work, believing that external harmony would encourage internal harmony as well, and labored personally to keep it from looking like a stereotypical "government lab", playing a key role in its design and architecture. It had a restored prairie which served as a home to a herd of American Bisons, ponds, and a main building purposely reminiscent of a cathedral in Beauvais, France. Wilson served as the director of Fermilab until 1978 and afterward retired to Ithaca. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory located in Batavia near Chicago, Illinois is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics, operated for the Department of Energy by the Universities Research Association (URA). ... Enrico Fermi (September 29, 1901 – November 28, 1954) was an Italian physicist most noted for his work on beta decay, the development of the first nuclear reactor, and for the development of quantum theory. ... Binomial name Bison bison Linnaeus, 1758 The American Bison (Bison bison), also called Buffalo, is a bovine mammal that is the largest terrestrial mammal in North America. ... A cathedral is a Christian church building, specifically of a denomination with an episcopal hierarchy (such as the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican churches), which serves as the central church of a bishopric. ... Beauvais is a city and commune of northern France, préfecture (capital) of the Oise département. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...

Wilson received many awards and honors, including the National Medal of Science in 1973, the Enrico Fermi Award in 1984, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He was president of the American Physical Society in 1985. A metal sculpture created by Wilson sits in the lobby of the Harvard Cabot Science Center building. National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science, also called the Presidential Medal of Science, is an honor given by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social... 1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ... The Enrico Fermi Award is a U.S. government Presidential award honoring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. ... The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in the United States is a government-established corporation supporting scientific research. ... The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, continues to operate to this day. ... The American Physical Society was founded in 1899 and is the worlds largest organization of physicists. ... Harvard, see Harvard (disambiguation) Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ...

He died at the age of 85 at his home in Ithaca, New York after a prolonged illness in January 2000. The city of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca in Homers Odyssey) sits on the southern shores of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York. ... 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

• Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (Henry Holt and Co., 2002).

External links

• The birth of Fermilab according to Wilson (http://www.fnal.gov/projects/history/wilson/cover.html)
• [1] (http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2000/ma00/ma00wilson.html) Obituary by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• Wilson's account of his work at Los Alamos (http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/p/hist_wilson.shtml)