E. Bright Wilson, Jr.
1908 - 1992
E. Bright Wilson, Jr, a physical chemist at Harvard University, was a leader in molecular spectroscopy and a pioneer in the application of microwave spectroscopy to the determination of molecular structure.
Edgar Bright Wilson, Jr. was born on December 18, 1908 in Gallatin, Tennessee, and died in 1992. He was the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, and honored with the National Medal of Science in 1975. Wilson was a student of Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, and his son, Kenneth G. Wilson, and student Dudley Herschbach would each win Nobel Prizes in Physcs.
Wilson was co-author with Pauling of a the graduate textbook, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry in 1935.
Among his accomplishments, Wilson 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, he co-authored with J.C. Decius and Paul C. Cross Molecular Vibrations, still the primary reference text for the theoretical analysis of vibrational spectroscopy, including the GF matrix method that Wilson had developed.
Starting in 1997, the American Chemical Society has annually awarded the E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy.
Roy Gordon, Dudley Herschbach, William Klemperer, Frank Westheimer, "Biographical Memoirs: E. Bright Wilson, Jr. (18 December 1908-12 July 1992)," <i>Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society</i> 139 no. 3 (1995): 312–315.