Robert Wilson—1978 Nobel Prize Winner

Robert Wilson—1978 Nobel Prize Winner Marc A. Shampo, Ph.D., and Robert A. Kyle, M.D. Robert Woodrow Wilson, American radio astronomer, shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics with ) "for their discovery of cosmic microGerman-born American astrophysicist Arno Penzias (1933wave background radiation" and with Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitsa (1894-1984). In 1963, Penzias and Wilson began monitoring radio emissions from a ring of gas that encircled the Milky Way galaxy. In 1964, they detected background radiation that permeated the universe uniformly. These unexplained emissions were later defined as remnants of the primordial explosion that occurred billions of years ago and that is believed to be the source from which the universe originated ("big bang" theory). Wilson, son of a chemical engineer employed in the oil fields of Texas, was born on Jan. 10,1936, in Houston. As a boy, Wilson often spent much of his time in the oil fields with his father. Thus, young Wilson developed an interest in science and electronics. In 1953, Wilson entered Rice University in Houston and received a B.A. degree in physics in 1957. He then entered California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where he received a Ph.D. degree in 1962. Subsequently, he spent 1 year in postdoctoral study before beginning employment at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. From 1963 to 1976, Wilson was a member of the technical staff of Bell Laboratories. He spent most of his career there. He became head of the radio physics research laboratories in 1976, a position he still holds. In 1963, Penzias and Wilson built the equipment that enabled them to obtain absolute measurements of the intensity of background radiation from the outer areas of the sky. The 1964 work, which made both of them famous, involved detection of background radiation of wavelengths corresponding to the emission by a black body at 3.5° K. Radiation is usually expressed in terms of wavelength or its associated frequency; however, because all objects radiate electromagnetic energy at wavelengths that grow shorter as the objects are heated, wavelength can be related to temperature. Besides the Nobel Prize, Wilson has received many awards and honors and belongs to the most prestigious scientific societies in the world. In 1987, Sweden issued a set of stamps honoring Nobel Prize winners in physics. One stamp in the set honors Wilson and Penzias. The other winners honored in the set are Antony Hewish (1924), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910), William Fowler (1911), and Martin Ryle (1918-1984).

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© 1994 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research