Obituary of Volney Colvin Wilson

Volney Colvin “Bill” Wilson, one of the leaders in the first demonstration of controlled nuclear fission at the University of Chicago in 1942, died in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Saturday, April 1, 2006. He was 96.

Bill attended public schools in Evanston, Illinois except for his junior year in high school, when he and his family sojourned in San Jose, California. There he was introduced to research in physics by Mr. Reese, the science teacher at the San Jose public high school. Bill tried to convert heat directly to electricity with an arrangement of thermocouples. His device was unsuccessful, but the attempt made a lasting impression on him, and the heat-to-electricity problem remained a life-long interest that would culminate some thirty years later with his invention of the thermionic converter.

Bill attended Northwestern University where he excelled in the sciences and in swimming. As a freshman, he was anchorman on a three-man team that established the world’s record for the 300-yard freestyle relay. Upon graduation in 1932, he was named that year’s Outstanding Scholar-Athlete for Northwestern University by the Western Conference (now the Big Ten Conference).

He took an M.S. degree in physics from Ohio State University in 1934. That summer he studied the propagation of fish in the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and used his results to invent and develop the “dolphin stroke,” an underwater stroke used today by competitive swimmers upon entering the water.

He entered the physics Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago in 1934 and joined the research group of A. H. Compton. He began a research program in cosmic rays by measuring their intensity as a function of depth in an inactive copper mine in the Keweenaw Peninsula in Upper Michigan. This was one of the first underground physics experiments. He had to sort out a tiny minority of cosmic rays from a plethora of interference from the surrounding rock, which he did by inventing a directional detector. It was a portable array of Geiger-Müller tubes, and by making observations in different directions, he was able to eliminate the interference. His observations extended to depths greater than 3600 feet. He published his results in The Physical Review on March 1, 1938. This work, which was reported in the New York Times later that year, is still quoted today.

After graduating with a Ph.D., Bill remained at the University of Chicago as Instructor in the Department of Physics. In 1940 Compton requested that Bill assess the feasibility of using uranium for making a chain reaction. Bill submitted a report with a positive conclusion to Compton, but as a pacifist he was filled with revulsion for the idea. He told Compton that he wanted nothing to do with such a project. Early in 1941 Bill joined the secret radar project at the MIT, in the belief that radar was a defensive weapon that would save many lives in London. By the end of 1941 world events, together with Compton’s urging, made it clear to Bill that he had an obligation to work on the atomic bomb despite his pacifism.

In January 1942 Bill left MIT and joined the fledging Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. There he directed a team that designed and built the detection, control, and safety systems for the first nuclear reactor, and he was at Fermi’s side in the famous squash court under the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago when controlled nuclear fission was first demonstrated at the end of 1942. Bill remained at Chicago for two more years after the historic experiment. During that time he and his team designed and built detection and control systems for new reactors at the Hanford Works in Washington State, and at the Clinton Works near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Late in 1944 he moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico and worked with Hans Bethe on the timing of the implosion device that would produce the plutonium bomb.

At the conclusion of WW II, Bill took a job at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady. He first worked on peacetime uses of atomic energy, but soon took up other research tasks when it became apparent that the nuclear program at GERL was being pre-empted by Admiral Rickover for the Navy’s new fleet of nuclear submarines.

In 1956 Bill conceived a way to convert some of the heat produced in nuclear reactors into electricity directly without steam turbines and electrical generators, thus fulfilling his dream as a high school student in San Jose. He called his invention the “thermionic converter.” It operates not with thermocouples, but with electrodes operating at different temperatures. It was adopted by the USSR for powering spy satellites during the cold war, and is a candidate today as the power source for deep space probes.

After Bill’s retirement from GE in 1973, he and Mrs. Wilson lived on a sailboat in the Bahamas in the winters and in Door County, Wisconsin in the summers. This arrangement lasted for about 10 years before Bill sold the sailboat and transferred his winter domicile to Colorado. Mrs. Wilson died there in 1995. Bill then joined the New Mexico Experimental Reactor Institute in Albuquerque as a consultant. He also had a consulting contract with Westinghouse. These two associations together lasted two years, and from them Bill published two papers in 1997. He was 87, and these would be his last scientific publications. He returned to Door County and took up residence in Sister Bay in 1999. His last professional activity was to co-teach a course in the history of atomic energy to 40 enthusiastic students at The Clearing, an adult enrichment center in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. He died peacefully just six weeks later.

He was a member and Fellow of the American Physical Society, author of 46 scientific publications and meeting reports, and holder of 15 patents.

Bill was a passionate pacifist and political liberal, and had an avid interest in public affairs. He was normally a warm and friendly man, but he was impatient with carelessness, sometimes reacting to it tartly but briefly. He preferred simplicity to pomp and ritual. He relished competition, but was self-effacing and modest. He loved to sail. He was a sociable and jovial man, blessed with of a good sense of humor, and so he accumulated a host of life-long friends.

He was lucid, conversational, and ambulatory until the final hours of his life.

He is survived by two children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Besides these, he leaves behind many grieving friends and admirers.