Edgar Bright Wilson

Edgar Bright Wilson Jr. (December 18, 1908 – July 12, 1992) was an American chemist.

Wilson was a prominent and accomplished chemist and teacher, recipient of the National Medal of Science in 1975, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1949 and 1970, the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1982, and a number of honorary doctorates. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the United States National Academy of Sciences. He was also the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus at Harvard University. One of his sons, Kenneth G. Wilson, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1982. E. B. Wilson was a student and protégé of Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and was a coauthor with Pauling of Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, a graduate level textbook in Quantum Mechanics. Wilson was also the thesis advisor of Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach. Wilson was elected to the first class of the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Wilson made major contributions to the field of molecular spectroscopy. He developed the first rigorous quantum mechanical Hamiltonian in internal coordinates for a polyatomic molecule. He developed the theory of how rotational spectra are influenced by centrifugal distortion during rotation. He pioneered the use of group theory for the analysis and simplification normal mode analysis, particularly for high symmetry molecules, such as benzene. In 1955, Wilson published Molecular Vibrations along with J.C. Decius and Paul C. Cross. Following the Second World War, Wilson was a pioneer in the application of microwave spectroscopy to the determination of molecular structure. Wilson wrote an influential introductory text Introduction to Scientific Research that provided an introduction of all the steps of scientific research, from defining a problem through the archival of data after publication.

Starting in 1997, the American Chemical Society has annually awarded the E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy, named in honor of Wilson.

Scientific career Bright started his higher education at Princeton in 1926, where he received both his bachelor's and master's degree in 1930 and 1931 respectively. He then went to the California Institute of Technology where he worked with Linus Pauling on crystal structure determinations and finished his PhD.

He was married to Emily Buckingham from 1935 until she died in 1954. He remarried to Therese Bremer in 1955, a distinguished photochemist. Wilson had a total of 4 sons and 2 daughters, one of whom was Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel Laureate in physics.

In his final years, Wilson suffered from Parkinson's disease. He died on July 12, 1992, in Cambridge, Massachusetts of pneumonia.