Professor Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, c mid-20th century

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, 14 February 1869 - 15 November 1959. A Scottish meteorologist and physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics in conjunction with Arthur Compton for the invention of the cloud chamber. After his father died, his family moved to Manchester in 1873. He studied at Owens College (now University of Manchester) with the plan to become a doctor. In 1887, he graduated with a BSc in Biology. He won a scholarship to attend Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge to study physics and chemistry. In 1892, he received 1st class honours. He became interested in meteorology and in 1893, he began to study clouds and their properties. He worked for some time in an observatory on Ben Nevis. He then tried to reproduce the observations of clouds in laboratory conditions, at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He was known as an unsuccessful lecturer due to a pronounced stutter. Wilson married Jessie Fraser in 1908, they had four children together. He received numerous other awards, including Royal Medal in 1922, and the Copley Medal in 1935. A crater on the moon is named after him. He died in 1959, aged 90.