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Alexander Wilson (1714 - October 18, 1786) was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, and educated at the University of St. Andrews.
He first came to notice as a Scottish type-maker and punch-cutter. He started a type-founding business in 1742 with a friend named John Baine in St Andrews. The company moved to Camlachie, near Glasgow in 1744. In 1748 he was appointed type-founder to Glasgow University. In the following year the partnership with Baine was dissolved. Later his sons became partners. He supplied types to the Foulis press making possible their beautiful and artistic publications. Among modern typefaces, Fontana and Scotch Roman are based on types cut by Alexander Wilson.
In 1749 Wilson made the first recorded use of kites in meteorology with a Glasgow University student Thomas Melville. They measured air temperature at various levels above the ground simultaneously with a train of kites.
He was appointed to the chair of astronomy at the University of Glasgow in 1760. Wilson primarily made contributions to astronomy and meteorology, and posited that "what hinders the fixed stars from falling upon one another", the question that Newton had posed in his Opticks (1704), was that the entire universe rotated around its centre. This has been found to be true for the stars of the Galaxy, the then known universe, which rotate around a central black hole. It is not true for the galaxies of the Universe which is expanding. He discovered that sunspots viewed near the edge of the Sun's visible disk appear depressed below the solar surface, a phenomenon still referred to as the Wilson effect. The crater Wilson on the Moon is named for him, Ralph Elmer Wilson and CTR Wilson.
He, and one of his sons Patrick (Peter) Wilson, were two of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh(RSE). Peter wrote a biographical article of his father in the Transactions of the RSE.
There is a picture of Alexander Wilson on the Glasgow University web page about 'Robert & Andrew Foulis, the Foulis Press, and Their Legacy' by George Fairfull Smith , accessed 19 Dec 2008.
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