[2] Before becoming a writer, Wilson was a research scientist (for a time as an assistant to Enrico Fermi) and instructor in physics at the university level.
At the height of the Cold War, he was considered a major novelist in the Soviet Union, while in his native United States his reputation was considerably less elevated.
His novels include Live with Lightning, Meeting at a Far Meridian, and My Brother, My Enemy.
A 1945 novel None So Blind was adapted for the 1947 film The Woman on the Beach directed by Jean Renoir.
[3] At the start of his career, he collaborated on a mystery novel The Goose is Cooked with Abraham Polonsky, written under the joint pseudonym of Emmett Hogarth.