Georges Charpak

Georges Charpak was a Polish-born French physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992 for his invention of subatomic particle detectors, especially the multiwire proportional chamber. He was a member of the French resistance during World War II and survived the Dachau concentration camp. He studied at the École des Mines and the Collège de France, where he worked with Frédéric Joliot-Curie. He joined CERN in 1959 and developed the multiwire chamber, which revolutionized high-energy physics and had applications in medicine, biology, and industry. He also contributed to the invention of the scintillation drift chamber and the Micromegas detector. He was a professor at the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He was also involved in science education and public outreach. He died in 2010 at the age of 86.