Physicist, Pioneer in Nuclear Science. He is remembered for his research as an American physicist who, with Clifford G. Shull, made major contributions in the field of neutron scattering and health physics. In 1994 Shull was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research. Since Wollan was deceased at the time of the nominations for the 1994 Nobel Prize, he was not eligible for the award, which was being awarded for research done nearly 50 years earlier by the two scientists. Wanting Wollan to received recognition, his accomplishments were mentioned in Shull's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. The Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously. It has been speculated that the two scientists were not nominated for the Nobel Prize earlier as it was too soon after using the atomic bomb near the end of World War II, hence would not have been politically correct at that time. After earning a bachelor's degree at Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1923, he graduated from the University of Chicago in Illinois, where he studied under Arthur Compton, Nobel Prize recipient for 1927. He received his PhD in 1929 and then taught physics at North Dakota State College and Washington University. He spent a year in Zurich, Switzerland at the National Research Council as a fellow conducting research on cosmic rays and held a position at the Chicago Tumor Institute studying the medical use of radium. He was one of the fifty scientists present on December 2, 1942 when the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved in the Chicago Pile experiment. In January 1942, he joined the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory at the invitation of Compton. As a member of the Manhattan Project research team, he focused on measuring radiation exposure developing the film badge dosimeter, a device that is worn for monitoring cumulative radiation dose due to ionizing radiation. Dosimeters were worn by thousands working on the Manhattan Project and are still being used today. On November 4, 1943 he was also part of the Clinton Laboratory's first continuously operating reactor, the Clinton Pile, which was later known as the X-10 Graphite Reactor. During World War II, he continued his research at Clinton Laboratory , which later became the Oak Ridge National Laboratories. In collaboration with Shull, who joined Oak Ridge National Laboratories in 1946, he developed neutron diffraction methodology used for determining atomic resolution structure of substance. Although Shull left Oak Ridge in 1955, he remained in research with Oak Ridge until 1967. At that point, he became the Associate Director of the Physics Division doing mainly consulting until 1977 when he retired to Minnesota. A modest man, he never boast on his achievements. In 1980, he published a chart showing data that he had proved on December 2, 1942 at the Chicago Pile. In 1965 his alma mater, Concordia College, awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science and in 1967 he received the John Price Wetheril Medal, which is today the Benjamin Franklin Medal. The Antarctic Wollan Island in Crystal Sound was named in his honor for the research on the crystal structure. He married and had two sons and a daughter; one son followed in his footsteps becoming a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico . His flat grave marker is plain and small with only his name and dates.