Harold Albert Wilson

For other people named Harold Wilson, see Harold Wilson (disambiguation).

Harold Albert Wilson (1 December 1874 – 13 October 1964) was an English physicist.^[3]

Harold Wilson FRS FRSE
Wilson in 1939
Born	(1874-12-01)1 December 1874 York, England, UKGBI
Died	13 October 1964(1964-10-13) (aged 89) Houston, Texas, US
Education	St Olave's Grammar School
Alma mater	University College London (BSc) University of Cambridge (BA, DSc)
Known for	Measuring the electron's charge (1897)
Spouse	Marjorie Smyth ​ (m. 1912)​
Relatives	Owen Richardson (brother-in-law)
Awards	FRS (1906)[1] FRSE (1925)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Trinity College, Cambridge (1901–1904) King's College London (1904–1909) McGill University (1909–12) Rice University (1912–1947) University of Glasgow (1924–1925)
Academic advisors	J. J. Thomson Jacobus van 't Hoff[2]
Doctoral students	Maurice Ewing (1931)[2] Tom W. Bonner (1934)[2]

Early life

Wilson was born in York, the son of Albert William Wilson, a goods manager with the North British Railway.^[4] His mother, Anne Gill, was the daughter of a farmer and innkeeper from Topcliffe.

Wilson was educated at St Olave's Grammar School. He then studied science at Victoria University College in Leeds and then at University College, London, graduating BSc in 1896. He then went to Cambridge University and gained a BA and DSc.^[5]

Career

In 1896, he became a colleague of English physicist J. J. Thomson at Cambridge University, and performed one of the earliest measurements of the electron's charge. He was awarded his Doctor of Science degree from London in 1900, and was elected Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1901.^[6] From 1901 to 1904, he held a James Clerk Maxwell fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory. He became a lecturer in physics at King's College London, then professor at the college in 1905. In 1906, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS).

In 1909, he accepted a role as professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal in Canada, staying there three years.

He joined the Rice Institute located in Houston, Texas in 1912, becoming the first chair of the physics department. He was one of the original 12 founding professors.^[7] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1914.^[8]

He returned to Britain in 1924, spending a year at the University of Glasgow. In 1925 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Charles Glover Barkla, Frederick Orpen Bower, John Walter Gregory and Sir John Graham Kerr.^[5]

In 1925, he returned to Rice University in Houston (also working as a consultant to an oil company) and continued there until retiral in 1947.

He died in a hospital in Houston on 13 October 1964.^[9][7]

Family

In 1912, he married Marjorie Patterson Smyth.^[5]

Harold had one sister, Lilian, who would marry Sir Owen W. Richardson.

Recognition

The Wilson Award at Rice University is named after him.^[10]

Publications

• Electrical Conductivity of Flames (1912)
• Experimental Physics (1915)
• Modern Physics (1928)
• Mysteries of the Atom (1934)