Edgar Bright Wilson

Edgar Bright Wilson Jr., called Bright Wilson, ( born December 18, 1908 in Gallatin, Tennessee, † July 12, 1992 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was an American chemist.

Biography

Wilson grew up in Yonkers in New York and was in his youth, amateur radio and radio hobbyists. The reading of a thermodynamics textbook made ​​him a career as a scientist begin. He studied at Princeton University (1930 and 1931 Bachelor's Master's degree ) and in 1931 at Caltech, where he received his doctorate in 1933, Linus Pauling, and then spent one year as a post-doctoral researcher. From 1934 he was one of the first Junior Fellows at Harvard University, where he was an Assistant Professor in 1936. In 1939 he became associate professor in 1946 and professor stayed the rest of his career, most recently as Theodore William Richards Professor there. From 1979 he was professor emeritus.

During World War II he was Director of Research at the Woods Hole Laboratory of underwater explosions.

Wilson was a pioneer in the theoretical analysis of molecular spectra and their derivation from quantum mechanics in particular with the application of group theory. From him comes the GF method to represent the Hamiltonian in the internal degrees of freedom of a polyatomic molecule by normal coordinates (shown in his textbook of 1955 Molelkülschwingungen ). He was also a pioneer in the application of based on the development of radar during World War II microwave spectroscopy to the elucidation of the molecular structures and the rotational degrees of freedom, both experimentally and theoretically. He wrote with Pauling a textbook of quantum mechanics, which in the U.S. has long been the standard reference for chemists.

In 1975 he received the National Medal of Science, 1976 Antonio Feltrinelli Prize, 1982, the Elliott Cresson Medal and the 1978 Welch Award in Chemistry. In 1979 he was awarded the Willard Gibbs Award, 1973 Rumford Medal and the 1937 American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry. 1949 and 1970 he was Guggenheim Fellow.

He was married in 1935 to Emily Buckingham, who died in 1954. With her he had two sons and a daughter. In his second marriage he was married to the photo chemist Therese Wilson. He is the father of Nobel Prize winner for Physics Kenneth Wilson. Among its some 150 graduate students include Dudley Herschbach and Robert Karplus.

Honors

The contract awarded since 1997 E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy of the American Chemical Society is named in his honor.

Works (selection)

• Linus Carl Pauling with: Introduction to quantum mechanics. With applications in chemistry. Dover Publ, New York, 1985, ISBN 0-486-64871-0 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1935)
• Introduction to scientific research. Dover Publ, New York, 1990, ISBN 0-486-66545-3 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1952).
• With John C. Decius, Paul C. Cross: Molecular Vibrations. The theory of Infrared and Raman vibrational spectra. Dover Publ, New York 1980, ISBN 0-486-63941- X ( Nachdr d ed New York 1955).

• Dudley R. Herschbach (ed.): Molecular symmetry, structure, spectra and selected papers of E. Bright Wilson. World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1997, ISBN 978-981-02-1774-7.