From frontiersman to physicist (Q1579190)

In an interview with the director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, Spencer R. Weart, nuclear physicist Robert Rathbun Wilson gives an account of the early years of his life and his scientific career. Born in Frontier, Wyoming, in 1914, Wilson spent his childhood in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in Mondesto, California, and in Woodstock, Illinois. After High School, he enrolled in the Electrical Engineering School of the University of California. Captivated by the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, he changed to physics and later became a student of Ernest O. Lawrence. Having obtained his Ph.D. in 1940, he moved to Princeton University. Most part of the interview is devoted to Wilson's recollections of Lawrence's cyclotron laboratory.