Wilson entered the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, and was awarded his Bachelor of Arts (AB) degree "cum laude" in 1936. He joined Ernest O. Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory, which was at that time blossoming into the top American site for both experimental and theoretical physics due to the efforts of Lawrence and J. Robert Oppenheimer, respectively. Wilson received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 1940 for his thesis on "Theory of the Cyclotron". That year he married Jane Inez Scheyer.