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Robert Rathbun Wilson was an American physicist known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, as a sculptor, and as an architect of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where he was the first director from 1967 to 1978.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Wilson received his doctorate under the supervision of Ernest Lawrence for his work on the development of the cyclotron at the Radiation Laboratory. He subsequently went to Princeton University to work with Henry DeWolf Smyth on electromagnetic separation of the isotopes of uranium. In 1943, Wilson and many of his colleagues joined the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, where Wilson became the head of its Cyclotron Group, and later its Research Division.
After the war Wilson briefly joined the faculty of Harvard University as an associate professor, then went to Cornell University as professor of physics and the director of its new Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. Wilson and his Cornell colleagues constructed four electron synchrotrons. In 1967 he assumed directorship of the National Accelerator Laboratory, subsequently known as the Fermilab. He managed to complete the facility on time and under budget, but at the same time made it aesthetically pleasing, with a main building purposely reminiscent of the Beauvais Cathedral, and a restored prairie with a herd of American Bison. He resigned in 1978 in a protest against inadequate government funding.
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