I'd spent my 90 minutes looking through some of the material donated to the University by Jessie Wilson, daughter of the Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize winner CTR Wilson. In a few weeks' time I'm giving a Hunterian Museum Insight talk about him. It was quite a privilege to handle some of his original cloud chamber photos and select a couple that will accompany the talk.
I've been interested in Wilson's story for years now. While I'm suspicious of personality cults around scientists I think we should celebrate our great scientists' achievements as we celebrate those of musicians, writers, sportsmen and women. A man who found his inspiration in the first place in the Scottish mountains offers an appealing way into stories of fundamental science, of subatomic particles and supernova explosions. I've given my "Lochaber to the Cosmos" talk to many different kinds of group in very many different places - and will do so again tonight, at the Scottish Dark Sky Observatory (sold out, apparently - I'm excited to be visiting it for the first time, by the way).
There are some other reasons for spending time with this tale. It's often been commented that the cloud chamber would have waited a long time for its invention had it not been for a very particular combination of events, people, coincidences of place and personality. So this story underlines that it's people who do science, not machines or robots or faceless organisations. That often comes up in discussion when there are professional scientists in the audience.
Maybe you and I will meet soon to talk about Wilson, Ben Nevis, the cloud chamber and the origins of cosmic ray science, tonight at the SDSO, on 17 March at the Hunterian - with a couple of Wilson's original pictures to hand - or somewhere else. Hope so!
