Born in Wyoming in 1914. He moved from Wyoming to Berkeley to study physics under Robert Oppenheimer. Wilson then accepted a position at Princeton. Later, he was recruited to head of the Experimental Physics division at Los Alamos. There was the youngest group leader at Los Alamos. He also convinced Harvard to loan their cyclotron to Los Alamos.
After the war, he refused any work that required him to have a security clearance. Wilson has served as the director of Fermilab and he is currently professor emeritus at Cornell University.
