Alan Herries Wilson (born 2.07.1906) is an English physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Society (1942). He was born in Wallasey. He studied (1923-26) at the University of Cambridge, worked there in 1929-45, in 1945 — 62 at Courtaulds Limited and in 1963 — 73 at Glaxo Group Limited (London).
His research was in the field of the theory of metals and semiconductors, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and atomic physics. Starting from ideas about the band structure of the electron spectrum, he divided crystals into metals, semiconductors and insulators (1931). He discovered a number of fundamental regularities in semiconductors. He introduced the division of semiconductors into intrinsic and impurity ones and the idea of donor and acceptor conduction. In 1931 he constructed the quantum theory of semiconductors. He was one of the first to apply (1932) the idea of quantum-mechanical tunnelling to the description of contacts between a metal and a semiconductor.