Richard Wilson
A mini-autobiography
December 2006
(Reference numbers are to collected list of references which may ne found in http://physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/publication/published_papers.html))
Richard Wilson was born at home at 48 Clarendon Road, Putney, London, England in 1926. The family moved to Merton Park, Surrey, near Wimbledon in 1933. After 2 years at the local elementary school, and a year of home schooling, he traveled daily to West Kensington to go to Colet Court preparatory school on Hammersmith Road. After winning a scholarship to St. Paul's school (just across the road) in 1939, he entered St Paul's school just as the second world war broke out and the school was evacuated to Easthampstead Park in Berkshire. Entering Christ Church Oxford, in 1943 on an open Mathematical Scholarship, he got first class honors in mathematical moderations in 1940, second class honors in Physics in 1946 and a D.Phil in 1949. His thesis was on the cross section for photodisintegration of the deuteron (1,3,9). During a postdoctoral year, 1950-1951, at Rochester New York, USA, he measured the reaction pi+ + D -> P + P thereby determining that the spin of the pi meson is zero (17,18). During a second post doctoral year in Stanford University in 1951-2 he married Andree Desiree Dumond who then bore him six children, .Andree and Richard now live in Newton Centre, Massachusetts.
Returning to Oxford University in 1952, he started an extensive program of work on nucleon-nucleon scattering using the cyclotron at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell. On accepting an appointment at Harvard in 1955 this program was continued at the Harvard University Cyclotron. This was summarized in his book "Nucleon-nucleon interactions" (Wiley-Interscience) which was later listed in the citation index as a most quoted book (68,452).
He was active in the planning for the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a 6 Gev electron synchrotron, and became Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee. When the accelerator commenced operation in 1962, he carried out the first experiment and embarked on a program of electron scattering from hydrogen (protons) and deuterium (proton + neutron).
He was an early enthusiast for electron-positron colliding beams and with others at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator "by-pass" project, produced in 1972 the first measurement of the extra "charm" degree of freedom, by finding an unexpectedly large cross section for electron-positron annihilation (152,158). This was subsequently dramatically confirmed at SLAC. After the Cambridge accelerator was closed, he joined scientists at Cornell University to work with their Storage ring, CESR, with the CLEO detector, which was pre-eminent in the field for 20 years.Starting in 1970, he was interested in parity violation, firstly in strong interactions, following his early work on nucleon nucleon scattering. Using neutrons from the NBS and Grenoble reactors he found parity violation in several nuclei. Looking in neutron-proton scattering, he searched for asymmetry in capture of polarized protons by hydrogen but was only able to place an upper limit - smaller than had been found in USSR but in agreement with what is now expected from the modern theory. This interest metamorphosed into parity violation in electron scattering, carried out with collaborators at Bates linear electron accelerator in Middleton, MA, and more recently at CEBAF at Jefferson National Laboratory in Newport News VA. This addressed various aspects of the weak interaction and is now addressing the contribution of strange quarks to the proton structure.
In 1967 he was appointed to the Board of the newly formed Universities Research Association, set up to manage the new Fermi National Accelerator laboratory, and in 1968 was Chairman of the Scientific Committee. He was also personally involved in experiments. He had already been a principal in a small experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, producing muon pairs from a pion beam at the rho and phi resonances. He then became a principal in the muon scattering experiments at FERMILAB (E98) which demonstrated that the "scaling" of inelastic form factors does not hold - one of the factors that suggests the existence of gluon radiation as predicted by the theoretical ideas of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) (189,198,215,217). His connection with Fermilab has not ceased but is maintained by his son, Dr Peter James Wilson, and daughter-in-law, Dr Julie Whitmore who are active on the permanent scientific staff there.
In the last 35 years, he has spent much time in a number of scientific issues closer to public policy. He joined with Koehler and Preston who had encouraged the use of protons from the Harvard University Cyclotron for "radiosurgery". On the closure of the ONR/AEC contract for the cyclotron operation, he persuaded the physics department to keep it operational for medical treatment, collecting use charges from the Massachusetts General Hospital. When the cyclotron operation was separated from the Physics Department in 1975 he was appointed the first Chairman of the operating committee reporting directly to the Dean of the faculty, and remained a member of the cyclotron operating committee till closure in 2002. This cyclotron treated as many patients (9119) with heavy charged particles as all other facilities in the world put together (229,342,388,396).. From 1973 to 2002 he was Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Radiation Medicine Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, which oversaw construction of a replacement for the Harvard cyclotron. He is still a member of that committeeHe was asked in 1987 to join the Science Advisory Board of a public interest law Foundation, the Atlantic Legal Foundation. In this he has helped to draft over a dozen briefs of amicus curiae in cases where so called "expert" witnesses have misapplied science in the courtroom. In particular a trilogy of cases before the US Supreme Court: Daubert, Joiner and Kumho tire, which altered the standard rules governing expert witnesses. Another, Covalt, before the California Supreme court, effectively stopped lawsuits about adverse health effects allegedly, and in our view erroneously, caused by electromagnetic fields.
But he has recognized real environmental issues when they arise and has acted thereon. He recognized in 1970 that burning of coal produced much mor damage to the environment and public health than nuclear power. He helped to enthuse colleagues at Harvard School of Public Health in their studies of this and was a coauthor of one, and editor of another, of 2 books on the subject. In 1991 he was asked to convene a conference on the effects of the Kuwait oil fires, and this developed, under the leadership of Dr John Evans, into a major effort studying the effect of the Iraqi aggression on the public health of Kuwaitis, which is likely to develop into a major ongoing study of health in Kuwait and possibilities for improvement.
Since 1990 he has been active in pointing out the dangers of arsenic in the environment, and has traveled to Inner Mongolia and Bangladesh to study these and help the local people. In particular he is President of the Arsenic Foundation, set up in 2004 to help the people of SE Asia (particularly Bangladesh), in their effort to obtain arsenic free water.
After the USA invaded Iraq in 2003, he began a small program to help the University of Baghdad get back on its feet. He has sponsored visits of Ministers and academics to Harvard. In 2006 this program is truncated by the violence in Baghdad and is reduced to bringing a graduate student from Erbil in northern Iraq.
He has also been involved with various aspects of energy policy, and in particular in explaining nuclear power and nuclear safety to the public. He was Chairman of a committee of the American Physical Society to study the "Radiological consequences of severe nuclear power accidents" (341). In 1986 when the nuclear power plant blew up at Chernobyl, he immediately called Russian friends volunteered to go and help, and was on US TV several times explaining the situation. For example he immediately called attention to the need for restricting milk consumption because of iodine release- an appeal which was not immediately accepted because of the Soviet desire for secrecy. He was one of the first foreigners to visit Chernobyl after the accident in 1986 (389), and helped to make a TV film about the situation. He was one of the 300,000 or so awarded a medal in 1957 as one of the "liquidators". He has written extensively since about the accident (475,485,501). In 1991-1992 He also chaired an advisory committee for the government of the Republic of China, on the operation and safety of the nuclear power plants in Taiwan.
In this he became acquainted in 1979 with Andrey Sahkarov and in 1991 he was asked, by the then head of state Dr Stanislaw Suskevich, to help form the Sakharov College of Radioecology in Minsk, Belarus, which has become the International Sakharov Environmental University. He was Chairman of the International Advisory Committee until 2002 and remains an honorary member, and was awarded an honorary doctorate. He has worked in particular on possible effects of low doses of radiation on public health (457,458,470,471).
Since 1973 he has been a writer in the field of Risk Analysis (174,227) and is a founder member of the Society of Risk Analysis and was given their distinguished service award. In this, he has been a pioneer in the use of comparing risks to aid in their understanding and a co author with Crouch, of a seminal book in the field (212,406). He has lectured on this subject in over 25 countries. 1990 he was awarded the "Forum Award" of the American Physical Society, for his work in communicating physics to the public (454).
He has also written on details of risk assessment of chemical carcinogens (437,440), and in particular on the controversial question of how the risk of chemically produced cancer may be logically derived from the data on animal bioassays (211,363,460,479). In all of this he emphasizes proper attention to uncertainty (305,327). In 2000-2006 this program has changed to a detailed study of the multistage theory of cancer and how it must be modified to address cancer at old age.
He has always been attentive to global environmental issues such as global air pollution and acid rain (225,244). In 1989 he helped start the National Institute of Global Environmental Change (486) and was Director of the Northeast Regional Center from 1990-1994.
He has served on a dozen government advisory committees in many different agencies and countries.
(December 7th 2006)
Richard Wilson
Selected Publications
3. "The decay constant of radio-sodium, 24Na," R. Wilson and G.R. Bishop, Proc. Phys. Soc. Lond. 62A, 457 (1949).
18. "Disintegration of the deuteron by pi+ meson," Donald L. Clark, Arthur Roberts and Richard Wilson, Phys. Rev. 85, 523 (1952).
60. "Electron-proton scattering at low momentum transfers," P. Lehmann, R. Taylor and Richard Wilson, Phys. Rev. 126, 1183 (1962).
94. "Comparison of elastic electron-proton scattering cross sections with some theoretical predictions," M. Goitein, J.R. Dunning, Jr. and Richard Wilson, Phys. Rev. Letts. 18, 1018 (1967).
126. "Elastic electron-proton scattering cross sections measured by a coincidence technique," M. Goitein, R.J. Budnitz, L. Carroll, J.R. Chen, J.R. Dunning, Jr., K. Hanson, D.C. Imrie, C. Mistretta and Richard Wilson, Phys. Rev. D1, 2449 (1970).
152. "Hadron production by electron-positron annihilation at 4 GeV center- of-mass energy," A. Litke, et al., Phys. Rev. Letts., Vol. 30, No. 23, pp. 1189-1192 (1973).
158. "Hadron Production by Electron-Positron Annihilaton at 5 GeV Center of Mass Energy," J. Leong, et al. Paper presented at the Int. Conf. on Electron and Photon Interactions at High Energies, Bonn, Germany, August (1973).
174. "Examples in Risk Benefit Analysis," New Scientist (1975); also in Chemtech, Journal of the American Chemical Society (1975).
225. Health Effects
of Fossil Fuel Burning:
Assessment and Mitigation,
with S.D. Colome, J.D. Spengler and D.G. Wilson, Ballinger, Publishing
Company: Cambridge, MA (1981).
227. Risk/Benefit Analysis, with E.A.C. Crouch, Ballinger Publishing Company: Cambridge, MA (1982).
229. "Rx: The Cyclotron," Harvard Magazine, pp. 58-62, Nov.-Dec. 1979.
244. "Health Effects of Fossil Fuel Burning," The Env. Prof., 2d, 224 (1980).
406. "Risk Assessment and Comparisons,: An Introduction," with E.A.C. Crouch, Hazard Prevention, p. 14, March/April 1988 (reprint of 378).
437. "Do Mouse liver tumors predict rat tumors? A study of concordance between tumors induced in different sites in rats and mice." D.M.Byrd, E.A.C. Crouch, Richard Wilson, Mouse Liver Carcinogenisis: Mechanisms and Species Comparisons, p. 19-41, Alan R. Liss, Inc., 1990.