Charles Thomson Rees Wilson was born in Glencorse, Scotland, 14 February 1869, the son of John Wilson and Annie Clerk Harper. He was educated at Greenheye's Collegiate School, Manchester; Owen's College, Manchester, 1884-8, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 1888-92. He married Jessie Fraser Dick in 1908 (died 1967), with whom he had one son and two daughters.

He was a teacher at Bradford Grammar School, 1894-5, and a researcher at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, 1892-4 and 1895-1900, where he investigated the behaviour of ions as condensation nuclei and developed the cloud chamber. He was inspired to make his experiments on clouds by a fortnight spent working at the Observatory on Ben Nevis, 1894. He was a fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 1900-34; and a University Demonstrator and Lecturer, 1900-18, Reader in Electrical Meteorology, 1918-25, and Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, 1925-34, Cambridge University. In 1911, using the cloud chamber he became the first person to see and photograph the tracks of individual alpha and beta particles and electrons. He also made observations of atmospheric electricity, mainly in the Peebles area of Scotland, developing several types of electrometers and a theory of thundercloud electricity.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, 1927, and was made a Companion of Honour, 1956.

He retired to Edinburgh, 1936, and then Carlops, in the Pentland Hills, close to his birthplace. He died on 15 November 1959.