Georges CharpakDied 29 Sep 2010 at age 86 (born 1 Aug 1924).Polish-French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992 for his invention and development of subatomic particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber, a breakthrough in the technique for exploring the innermost parts of matter. As particle physicists have focussed their interest on very rare particle interactions, which often reveal the secrets of the inner parts of matter, sometimes only one particle interaction in a billion is the one searched for. Charpak replaced now inadequate photographic methods with modern electronics that connected the detector directly to a computer. |
