Applied Science: The Man with the Powerful Kick

Robert E. Wilson liked to joke that "I pose as a businessman when talking to scientists and as a scientist when talking to businessmen." The confusion was natural. Over the years Wilson was a research chemist, the chairman of the board of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, chairman of the American Oil Co. Occupational pigeonholers marked him down as an applied scientist — a term that in Wilson's case meant a complete man using his varied talents completely.

In the Family. Wilson won scientific credentials aplenty — a B.S. from M.I.T. (1916), an M.I.T. associate professorship in chemical engineering, 90 patents for petrochemical inventions, 120 scientific papers. But even more winning was his impact on other men. Presenting him with the Society of Chemical Industry's Perkin Medal in 1943, American Chemical Society President Thomas Midgley Jr. couldn't help recalling an 1895 picnic in Beaver Falls, Pa., where both he and Wilson were born. Midgley was being bullied by a gang of "incipient hoodlums." Up came Mrs. Wilson with two-year-old Bobby. "Kick the naughty boys," commanded mother, and Wilson kicked. "Everybody laughed, including me," reported Midgley. "The operation was a huge success."

Wilson kept on kicking. While board chairman at Standard of Indiana, he kicked a group of industrialists into starting a program of corporate support for private colleges and science graduate students. He kicked his own company into adopting Ethyl gasoline. And he then kicked himself into public service.

Down with Monopoly. A double-threat scientist-administrator on the Atomic Energy Commission from 1960 until early this year, Wilson fought to end Government monopoly in the atomic-energy field—and was largely responsible for legislation, passed last month, permitting private ownership of atomic materials.

Winding up his stint as an AECommissioner, Wilson got a grateful letter from President Johnson: "Your outstanding performance and the high esteem with which you are regarded as a scientist, a businessman and a public servant must be a source of satisfaction to you as your years of public service come to an end." But somehow Bob Wilson never settled down. Last month he journeyed to Geneva to work as an adviser to the U.S. delegation at the U.N. International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. There, last week, still in the public service, he died of a stroke at 71.