An Index to C. T. R. Wilson’s laboratory records and notebooks in the Library of the Royal Society

Abstract

Through the generous gift of Mrs C. T. R . Wilson the archives of the Royal Society have recently been enriched by the complete laboratory notes and records made personally by her husband throughout the whole period of his distinguished life of research upon condensation phenomena and atmospheric electricity. The cloud track chamber which Wilson evolved as a result of these basic investigations has had a most decisive influence on the progress of modem physics and much of our knowledge of new elementary particles has been made possible only by its use. These intimate records of C .T .R .’s brilliant conceptions and experiments are therefore of great historical importance. But the records are also of great interest for more general reasons. C. T. R . Wilson was a shy and very modest man who did not easily enter into discussions of his problems with other workers. It is clear that he often satisfied the need for argument and counter argument by written soliloquys of his summaries and conclusions. Although these notebooks, dating from 1895 and almost always completely legible and orderly, contain mainly direct laboratory records, there are frequent interpolations of such discursive reasoning and argument. These volumes illustrate, therefore, in a fascinating manner the processes of individual discovery and the gradual evolution of scientific generalizations by the combination of experimental practice with imaginative ideas.