Wilson at the groundbreaking for Fermilab's Main Ring accelerator in 1969. Robert Rathbun Wilson (March 4, 1914 - January 16, 2000) was an American physicist who was a group leader of the Manhattan Project, a sculptor, and an architect of Fermi National Laboratory (Fermilab), where he was also the director from 1967-1978. In 1943, Wilson was appointed as head of the Cyclotron Group (R-1) by Oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Only in his late twenties, he was the youngest group leader in the experimental division. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Wilson helped organize the Association of Los Alamos Scientists (ALAS), which called, with a scientists' petition, for the international control of atomic energy. He also helped form the Federation of American Scientists and served as its chairman in 1946. In 1967 he took a leave of absence from Cornell to assume directorship of the not-yet-created National Accelerator Laboratory. Under Wilson's leadership the facility was completed on time and under budget. Originally named the National Accelerator Laboratory, it was renamed the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab for short) in 1974. Wilson served as the director of Fermilab until 1978, and then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1982 he became Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics at Columbia University. He retired in 1984 and died in 2000, at the age of 85, after a prolonged illness.