Robert Wilson was born in Wyoming, USA. He was a physicist, and sculptor, who was well known for his creative solutions to problems. His career began at the University of California with research into the development of the cyclotron particle accelerator.
In 1943 Wilson was recruited, like many other physicists working in the USA at the time, to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos to work on the development of the atomic bomb. Another young physicist at Los Alamos was Richard Feynman (PHYSICS REVIEW Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 16–17). Wilson soon became head of the research division. Like Feynman, Wilson had some regrets that he continued to work on the development of the atomic bomb once Nazi Germany had surrendered. It was clear the German physicists had made much less progress.
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