Although he had registered as a medical student, he switched to science and graduated with a First Class degree in zoology when he was only eighteen years of age. At the urging of his tutors, he decided to sit for the scholarship exams for Cambridge in practical physics and chemistry. Although he had received no instruction in either subject, he performed so well in the exam that he was awarded a scholarship to Sidney Sussex College.
Begins Career at Cambridge
In 1888, when he was nineteen years old, Wilson entered Cambridge to study physics and chemistry. He found it a thoroughly stimulating environment. He attended physics lectures at its world-renowned Cavendish Laboratory--he was, in fact, the only student in his year taking physics as a main subject--and began to develop what would be a lifelong interest in meteorological physics. After graduating from Cambridge in 1892, Wilson found work as a demonstrator and a private coach. Although it helped him to keep body and soul together, it left him with precious little time or energy for his own research. At the time, his work was devoted to a comparison of the behavior of different substances in solution.
This is a free page. This page contains 184 words. This
biography contains 2,020 words (approx. 7 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our C. T. R. Wilson Access Pass.
