Georges Charpak was born on 1 August 1924[4] toJewish parents, Chana (Szapiro) and Maurice Charpak, in the village of Dąbrowica inPoland (nowDubrovytsia inUkraine). Charpak's family moved fromPoland toParis when he was seven years old, beginning his study of mathematics in 1941 at theLycée Saint-Louis.[5] The actor and film directorAndré Charpak was his younger brother.
Afterclasses préparatoires studies atLycée Saint-Louis in Paris and later atLycée Joffre in Montpellier,[6] he joined in 1945 the Paris-basedÉcole des Mines, one of the most prestigious engineering schools in France. The following year he became a naturalized French citizen. He graduated in 1948, earning the French degree ofCivil Engineer of Mines (Ingénieur Civil des Mines equivalent to aMaster's degree) becoming a pupil in the laboratory ofFrédéric Joliot-Curie at theCollège de France during 1949,[5][7] the year after Curie had directed construction of the firstatomic pile within France.[8] While at the Collège, Charpak secured a research position[5] for theNational Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He received his PhD in 1954[9] innuclear physics at the Collège de France, receiving the qualification after having written a thesis on the subject of very-low-energy radiation due to disintegration of nuclei (Charpak & Suzor).[5][10]
In 1959, he joined the staff ofCERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) inGeneva, where he invented and developed[11] themultiwire proportional chamber. The chamber was patented and quickly superseded the old bubble chambers, allowing for better data processing.[12][13] This new creation had been made public during 1968.[14] Charpak was later to become a joint inventor with Nlolc and Policarpo of the scintillation drift chamber during the latter parts of the 1970s.[15] He eventually retired from CERN in 1991. In 1980, Georges Charpak became professor-in-residence at École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles in Paris (ESPCI) and held the Joliot-Curie Chair there in 1984. This is where he developed and demonstrated the powerful applications of the particle detectors he invented, most notably for enabling better health diagnostics. He was the co-founder of a number of start-up in the biolab arena, including Molecular Engines Laboratories, Biospace Instruments and SuperSonic Imagine – together withMathias Fink. He was elected to theFrench Academy of Sciences on 20 May 1985.
Georges Charpak was awarded theNobel Prize in Physics in 1992 "for his invention and development ofparticle detectors, in particular themultiwire proportional chamber", with affiliations to both École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles (ESPCI) and CERN. This was the last time a single person was awarded the Physics prize, as of 2025. In 1999, Charpak received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement.[16]
Georges Charpak on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1992Electronic Imaging of Ionizing Radiation with Limited Avalanches in Gases
