He is still involved in experiments on parity violation in electron proton scattering and comparison of neutron and proton radii at CEBAF (Jefferson National Laboratory at Newport News VA)  and on an asymmetry in neutron decay
 .

    Professor and Mrs. (Andree) Wilson are both concerned that there are a number of festering trouble spots around the world, Kashmir,   Sri Lanka,  Ireland, Pakistan tribal areas, Israel and Palestine, where hatred and anger which have built up over 60 years  have replaced thought  on both sides.  Each party to a conflict has a duty to ensure the human rights  of each and every individual on the other  side, yet these human rights frequently get ignored.  Unless these 60 year old quarrels are faced by the whole world, the whole world  will be plunged into conflict.   There is an unfortunate similarity between these trouble spots.  India, Russia and Israel, each the stronger party in their respective conflicts,  Kashmir, Chechnya and the Holy Land, took President Bush's "war on terrorism" to imply US approval to subdue the other party using extreme terror attacks of their own.

     In 1492 Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" and it has been customary to celebrate his discovery of America.   5 centuries later we look at it in a different light.  We also remember that in 1492 the "wicked" Christians drove the Muslims and Jews out of Spain to go to distant countries:  Holland, Eastern Europe, North Africa.  On May 14th 1948 the state of Israel was founded.  Will it take 5 centuries to remember the effect on the Palestinian population in their NAKBA?     A brief discussion of the history by a non-Zionist Jew  can be found here.

    World War I was hailed by the "Allies"  England, France and later USA, as a "war to end all wars".   Alas, that was too optimistic and the League of Nations that was founded at the peace treaty collapsed in the 1930s because of a failure of the leading countries to follow through.  In May 1945 there was a new start in the "United Nations."   The UN deliberately set itself restrictions to avoid being swamped.     The UN countries would try to prevent attacks by one country on another, but not intervene in local squabbles.   But in the 1980s the USA and other countries encouraged the break up of a UN country Yugoslavia.   In 2003 the USA intervened a founding member of the UN,  Iraq, contrary to the desires of the UN and without (overt) support of any neighboring country.   Having dismembered Yugoslavia NATO helped Kosovo to break away from Serbia.   The effects of this are profound, both on the US economy, and perhaps most important on the view of the world's population about the policies of the United States.     It gave a precedent and encouraged Russia to recognize breakaway regions of Georgia.   Just as USA has had the Monroe doctrine for over 150 years and likes to control its neighbors, so Russia wants to control its neigbours and resents the influence of countries in a distant continent.    The desire to control OIL supplies is an unspoken but very much on the surface.    It has been so since Winston Churchill, as first Lord of the (UK) admiralty bought a controlling interest in the Anglo-Iranian oil company in 1912.  
 
     Yugoslavia was created by the Treaty of Versailles originally as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and by 1945 as a Federation.   It must not be forgotten that Russia supported the Serbs in July 1914 when Austria (including Croatia and Slovenia at the time) attacked bringing on WWI.  In WWII the refusal of the young King Peter to allow Hitler free passage of troops through Yugoslavia led to occupation and a valiant resistance.   This delayed the Nazi attack on USSR by 6 weeks,  which was, perhaps crucial in allowing the USSR to survive that terrible summer.   A segment of Croations formed the Ustashe which allied itself with Hitler and slaughtered between 200,000 and 500,000 Serbs.  After the death of President Tito,  who had kept the Federation together for nearly 40 years, Serbs were trying to assert themselves after many years of what many of them  considered to be Croatian (Tito) rule.   Some countries, members of the UN,  started to be active in what has been construed by others as an encouragement for the federation to break apart.  Of course the later atrocities committed by ethnic Serbs, in Bosnia in particular, set much of the developed world against Serbia and the federation did break apart completely.   But starting in the 1990s, a more serious trend began.  Much of the world turned against Serbia itself as the Serbs struggled with dissension in a part of Serbia proper - Kosovo.   This resulted in a bombing of Belgrade - the 3rd time Belgrade was bombed in half a century.  (1941 by the Nazis, 1944 by the Americans and again in 1990s by NATO).  Now in February 2008, a unilateral Declaration of Independence has been declared in Kosovo,   without support of the UN security council.    Worse still it was immediately recognized by many European countries and the USA who are, at least technically, flouting the UN.  This has set back the idea of peaceful world approach to disagreements.   It is instructive to list the nations which have not recognized Kosovo.  They include Russia, Spain, and India which have secessionist movements of their own.   It is too early to see how this will play out.    The opinion of one Harvard physics department staff member is eloquently expressed on his website.   The Balkans, in the turmoil as the Ottoman empire disintegrated,  have been the site of far too many excellent novels and plays - such as Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" (about the 1885 war) for anyone to feel comfortable about the future.    King Alexander, in spite of intensive struggle in the 1920s, was unable to get the people in his expanded country to agree and he was assassinated  in 1934 by a Macedonian activist, allegedly acting with Croat separatists.  The Serbs in 1941+ and more recently after 1985 have paid very heavily for King Alexander's failure.

   Richard Wilson was awarded the degree of D. Phil. at  Oxford University in 1949 for a thesis on the photo disintegration of the  deuteron.  He traveled to the USA in June 1950 for a position in Rochester NY.  With Clark and Roberts he used the principle of detailed balance to measure the spin of the pi zero meson at Rochester in March 1951. (see a story about this in his notes about Marshak) He then studied  nucleon-nucleon scattering at AERE Harwell, and the Harvard Cyclotron laboratory for many years.  The Harvard Cyclotron had its first beam on June 3rd 1949  and celebrated its 50th anniversary  in 1999 with a conference.  Richard Wilson, together with Karl  Strauch and Andreas Koehler led an  upgrade of the cyclotron in 1955 and led a program in uses of polarized protons  to study the nucleon nucleon interaction.   The story can be found in a history of the Harvard cyclotrons; In addition to this web based history,  a small hard copy book  on sale at Harvard University Press.

    Then Richard Wilson moved to a study of nucleon  structure by electron-proton scattering at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator  from 1963 to 1970,  and muon proton scattering at Fermilab in the E98  and E665 collaborations.  Richard Wilson was an early proponent of electron-electron  and electron positron colliding beams with a tentative proposal in 1956, and  a definitive proposal in 1962. Richard Wilson was a participant in the CEA "bypass"  program which demonstrated an unusually large cross-section  for producing  hadrons (see published papers 150,152,155,158).  He has worked at a number of research reactors, cyclotrons, synchrotrons,  linear accelerators and colliding beam facilities.    He  worked  in the CLEO collaboration   using the electron-positron colliding  beam facility at Cornell University,   until November 2001 when the Harvard group formally  left the collaboration.   He is still participating in scattering of polarized electrons from protons at CEBAF which provides information on the strange quark form factor in the nucleon.     He also is participating in an experiment on "little a" in decay of polarized neutrons.  More details are available in his published papers.