Robert R. Wilson was the brilliant designer, builder and founding director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory with its series of high-energy physics particle accelerators providing collision energies of 200, 400 and 2,000 GeV, the most powerful facilities in their class over a period of 40 years. He undertook the "impossible" and succeeded. With untrammeled courage he challenged the establishment as he bypassed many conventional practices in accelerator design, construction and cost control. With his remarkable talents he addressed a wide range of important aspects of the relationships of art and science, elegance and efficiency and physics and society. In doing so he always found ways for his pursuit of science to support his strong advocacy for human rights, international collaboration and democracy.