C. T. R. Wilson
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Charles Thomson Rees Wilson was a British meteorologist and physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Compton for his invention of the cloud chamber.
Wilson in 1927
Wilson's original cloud chamber.
Commemorative plaque at Ben Nevis about the observatory there, and Wilson's cloud chamber.
Commemorative plaque at Flotterstone
Cloud chamber
Videos
A cloud chamber, also known as a Wilson chamber, is a particle detector used for visualizing the passage of ionizing radiation.
Fig. 4: How condensation trails are formed in a diffusion cloud chamber.
Fig. 5: In a diffusion cloud chamber, a 5.3 MeV alpha-particle track from a Pb-210 pin source near Point (1) undergoes Rutherford scattering near Point (2), deflecting by angle theta of about 30 degrees. It scatters once again near Point (3), and finally comes to rest in the gas. The target nucleus in the chamber gas could have been a nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, or hydrogen nucleus. It received enough kinetic energy in the elastic collision to cause a short visible recoiling track near Point (2). (The scale is in centimeters.)
Example of watercooled thermoelectric cloud chamber