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Finding Aid

Wilkins, Thomas Russell

Thomas Russell Wilkins fonds. -- [1926-1943]. -- 25 cm of textual records and graphic material.

Thomas Russell Wilkins, physicist, was born in Toronto on 6 June 1891. He graduated from McMaster University, then located in Toronto, Ontario, in 1912, before continuing on to the University of Chicago. From 1918 to 1925 he was head of the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Brandon College in Calgary, Alberta. During that time he also completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He spent one year, 1925-1926, at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, England. In 1926 he joined the Physics Department of the University of Rochester in New York. In 1928 he was appointed director of the Institute of Optics. He died in Rochester on 10 December 1940. Wilkins secured photographic recordings of cosmic rays and the disintegration of radium atoms.

The fonds consists of correspondence, scrapbooks containing news clippings about Wilkins, research notes, typescripts and photographs of experiments, and published articles.

Title based on content of fonds.
Fonds was donated by Mrs. Wilkins in May 1953. In July 1977 the fonds was transferred from the Baptist Church Archives located on the McMaster campus to Archives and Research Collections.
Finding aid available in hard copy and electronically.
There are no access restrictions.
Further accruals are not expected.

Contact: archives@mcmaster.ca
Last Reviewed: April 14, 2005
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