Georges Charpak

Charpak tied the nuptial knot with Dominique Vidal in 1953. The couple was blessed with three children.

Charpak became a naturalized French citizen in 1946.

He breathed his last on September 29, 2010 in Paris, France. He was 86 years of age then.

Georges Charpak was born Jerzy Charpak on August 1,1924 to Anna and Maurice Charpak in the village of Dabrowica in Poland. His parents belonged to the Jewish community. He had a brother, Andre Charpak who eventually became an actor and film director.

At the age of seven, Charpak’s family shifted base from Poland to Paris. Ten years later in 1941, young Charpak began his formal education at the Lycee Saint Louis, studying mathematics. Thereafter he studied at Lycee de Montpellier.

During World War II, Charpak served in the resistance. In 1943, he was imprisoned by Vichy authorities. The following year, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where he remained until 1945.

Liberated from the Nazi camp, Charpak resumed his studies, enrolling at the Ecole des Mines, a prestigious engineering school in France in 1945. Three years later, he graduated from the same, earning the French degree of Civil Engineer of Mines equivalent to Master’s degree.

Following his graduation degree, Charpak became a student of Frederic Joliot-Curie at College de France in 1949. In 1954, he received his PhD in nuclear physics from the College de France. The subject of his thesis was low radiation due to disintegration of nuclei.

While studying for his PhD, Charpak secured a research position for the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He worked there until 1959.

In 1959, Charpak joined the staff of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva. It was there that he conducted his life’s most important research and discovery.

A year following his entry at CERN, Charpak participated in the first exact measurement of the magnetic momentum of the muon. The team discovered that muon was not a separate particle of the nucleus but just a heavy electron. Next, he focused on the development of various types of non-photographic scintillating chambers from 1961 to 1967.

In 1968, he invented and developed the multiwire proportional chamber. The chamber was basically an advanced version of old bubble chamber which had become out-dated and archaic. The new chamber allowed for better data processing. Also, it assisted in sensing, evaluating and recording hundreds of millions of particles in a second.

Charpak’s invention of the multiwire proportional chamber was revolutionary in the field of particle physics. Unlike its predecessors such as the cloud chamber or the bubble chamber which recorded the tracks left by particles at the rate of only one or two per second, the multiwire chamber recorded up to one million tracks per second and transmitted the data directly to a computer for analysis. Furthermore, old chambers depended on taking photographs of the tracks left by particles as they emerged from collision but Charpak’s chamber used miniscule wires to capture electric pulse thus generating more information.

Charpak’s most important contribution in particle physics came in 1968 when he invented and developed the multi-wire proportional chamber. The chamber was one-of-its-kind then as it was way ahead of its predecessors, cloud chamber or bubble chamber. Unlike its forerunners which recorded the tracks left by particles at the rate of only one or two per second, the multi-wire chamber recorded up to one million tracks per second. Furthermore, it transmitted its data directly to a computer for analysis thus eliminating the process during which scientists scanned thousands of photographs one by one.