He studied physics at King's College, Durham and obtained his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where he worked at the Royal Observatory on stellar spectra.
[2] In 1959 Wilson joined the Plasma Spectroscopy Group at Harwell Laboratory where he was responsible for measuring the temperature in the Zeta experiment, confirming that it had not been hot enough to have produced thermonuclear fusion.
By placing telescopes on rockets and satellites it was possible to avoid the absorption of the ultraviolet light by the Earth's atmosphere and gain a great deal of information about the hot plasmas especially in the Sun's chromosphere and corona.
Wilson then became involved in the European Space Research Organization's first astronomy satellite, the TD-1A mission, and led the British collaboration with Belgium in the S2/68 experiment which in 1972 conducted the first all sky survey in the ultraviolet.
Wilson, however, convinced the UK authorities to continue the study, and achieved a radical redesign which at the same time had greater capability and was simpler and therefore cheaper.