Charles Thomson Rees Wilson

Scottish physicist and meteorologist (1869-1959)

  • Fame61.5
  • Momentum0.0
  • Wikipedia1.8K
Source-basedFalling
Lived 1869–1959, aged 90United Kingdom
  • Wikipedia
    87 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1869–1959
    Aged 90
  • Awards
    10
    recognised works
Summary
Updated 2026-06-21

A physicist who made the invisible visible: Wilson built a device that let scientists see the fleeting tracks of subatomic particles for the first time, turning quantum theory from abstraction into something you could photograph.

Biography

About

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson was born on 14 February 1869 in Britain, trained as a meteorologist and physicist, and spent years puzzling over how to capture what no one had seen. His invention — the cloud chamber — used vapor to reveal the paths of charged particles as they tore through space, trails of condensation marking where electrons and alpha rays had just been. The device became essential to atomic research, a way to witness the architecture of matter itself. In 1927 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Compton for the work. He died on 15 November 1959.

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Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
61.5
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical22.7
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
Country rank
Category rank
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence