Arthur Wilson (crystallographer)

Arthur James Cochran Wilson, FRS^[1] (28 November 1914 – 1 July 1995) was a Canadian-British crystallographer known for his work on the statistical aspects of X-ray crystallography.^[2]

Arthur Wilson
Born	(1914-11-28)28 November 1914 Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada
Died	1 July 1995(1995-07-01) (aged 80) Cambridge, England, UK
Education	Dalhousie University (BSc, MSc) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) University of Cambridge (PhD)
Known for	Wilson plot Wilson statistics
Scientific career
Institutions	Cardiff University University of Birmingham
Doctoral advisor	Hans Müller Lawrence Bragg
Doctoral students	David Chilton Phillips

Education and career

He was born in Springhill, Nova Scotia. He was educated at King's Collegiate School, Windsor, Nova Scotia, and Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was awarded a BSc in 1934 and an MSc in 1936. He received his first PhD in 1938 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the anomalous thermal behaviour of the ferro-electric Rochelle salt.^[3]

After retirement he returned to Cambridge to chair the International Union of Crystallography's Commission on International (Crystallographic) Tables, which were in need of updating. He died in Cambridge on 1 July 1995.

Honours and awards

Wilson was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1963. He was vice-president of the International Union of Crystallography between 1978 and 1981. He received the Distinguished Fellow Award from the International Centre for Diffraction Data in 1984. He was awarded a honorary doctor degree from Dalhousie University in 1991.^[1]

Personal life

Wilson had married Harriett Friedeberg in 1946; they had two sons and a daughter.