André Guinier

André Guinier (born August 1, 1911 in Nancy , † July 3, 2000 in Paris ) was a French solid-state physicist and crystallographer .

Life

Guinier studied at the École normal supérieure (ENS) with the degree in 1934. He then worked as an Agrégé preparator in their physics laboratory. In 1939 he received his doctorate with a thesis on X-ray crystallography under Charles Mauguin . He then worked at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), where he became deputy director of the test laboratory in 1944. In 1949 he became a professor at the Sorbonne . At the end of the 1950s, he was the first dean involved in building the new university campus in Orsay . He moved his research laboratory from the center of Paris there and founded with Jacques Friedel and Raimond Castaing the Laboratory for Solid State Physics ( Laboratoire de Physique of Solid , LPS) and was at its acquisition by the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) whose first Director.

He founded his own school of X-ray diffraction to study solids and their order structures or disordered solids, introducing a number of new techniques, for example he emphasized the role of diffuse scattering of X-rays (in this context, the Guinier law is named after him, → scattering mass radius ) and the role of local order in the explanation of solid body properties. In 1938 he described the phenomenon of the Guinier-Preston zones while studying aluminum-copper alloys . He not only examined metals and solids, but also soft matter (polymers, biological materials). From the 1970s he researched amorphous materials in particular.

Guinier was also active in the development of instruments, for example with the X-ray camera named after him ( Guinier method or Guinier camera , → X-ray diffraction ). He also played a role in the development of the electron beam microprobe by Raimond Castaing .

He was a member of the Académie des Sciences (1971). He was President of the French Mineralogical Society in 1960, President of the French Physical Society in 1962 and President of the International Union of Crystallography from 1969 to 1972 . In 1972 he received the Prix ​​des trois physiciens and in 1985 the Gregori Aminoff Prize .

Fonts

• The physical properties of solids. An easy to understand introduction to solid state physics. Munich, Hanser 1992
• The solid state. From superconductors to superalloys. Oxford University Press 1989
• Small angle scattering of x-rays. Wiley 1955
• Théorie et Technique de la Radiocristallographie. Dunod 1956, 1965
  • English translation: X-ray diffraction: in crystals, imperfect crystals, and amorphous bodies. Freeman 1963

Web links

• Obituary by Marianne Lambert, Acta Crystallographica A, 57, 2001, 1