Bernard Gregory

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Bernard Paul Gregory 1966

Bernard Paul Gregory (born January 19, 1919 in Bergerac , Dordogne department , † December 25, 1977 in Élancourt , Yvelines department ; spelling of the family name also Grégory ) was a French physicist , director general of CERN and the CNRS .

life and work

Bernard Gregory was the son of an engineer. In 1938 he took first place in the admission competition of the École polytechnique and began his studies there. This was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. Gregory served as a sous-lieutenant in the artillery and was interned in a German officers' camp from 1940 to 1945 . After the war he resumed his studies and was best of the class in the final examination of Polytechnique in 1945. In 1946 and 1947 he continued his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris . He then moved to the United States , where he did his doctoral thesis under Bruno Rossi at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the field of elementary particles in cosmic rays .

After his Ph.D. he returned to France and after a short time became deputy director of the physics laboratory at "Polytechnique" , which had been established in 1936 by Louis Leprince-Ringuet . Here he worked with other physicists such as Charles Peyrou , Jean Crussard , André Lagarrigue and later also André Astier .

In 1958 he became professor of physics at the " Polytechnique" . Seven years later, in 1965, he succeeded Victor Weisskopf as General Director of CERN. During his tenure, he initiated the construction of two important projects at CERN. Under his leadership, the first were protons - storage rings built the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR). In addition, it was decided to build the 300 GeV proton synchrotron (now called the Super Proton Synchrotron ), which was already being considered under Weisskopf.

When Gregory stepped down in December 1970, he became Chairman of the ISR Committee. He returned to the École polytechnique , where he became director of the physics laboratory and thus successor to his teacher and mentor Leprince-Ringuet. On March 5, 1973 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences .

In 1973 he was appointed director general of the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Following this post, he took over the leadership of the Délégation générale à la recherche scientifique et technique (DGRST), a government coordination agency for research policy, which reports directly to the French Prime Minister , until he suddenly died in 1977.

Association Bernard Gregory

A few months before his death, Gregory set up a working group whose topic was the professional integration of young post-doctoral researchers. From this group came the Association Bernard Gregory , founded in 1980 , an institution under French association law with headquarters in Paris, which takes on the role of mediator between commercial enterprises and young graduates at French and international level and particularly assists in the search for jobs and candidates.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fiche ancien - Bernard Grégory. AX - Association des anciens élèves et diplômés, accessed on October 20, 2014 (French, database entry on Bernard Gregory on the website of the alumni association of the École polytechnique ).
  2. ↑ Nikolai Tyurin: Forty years of high-energy physics in Protvino . In: CERN Courier . CERN . November 1, 2003. Retrieved September 29, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Bernard Paul GREGORY (1919-1977). In: Les Annales des Mines. Retrieved October 18, 2014 (French, with an obituary by Louis Leprince-Ringuet dated March 31, 1978, published in La Jaune et la Rouge , the magazine of the alumni of the Ecole polytechnique , dated May 1978).
  4. ↑ Nikolai Tyurin: Forty years of high-energy physics in Protvino . In: CERN Courier . CERN . November 1, 2003. Retrieved September 29, 2014.
  5. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter G. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 20, 2019 (French).
  6. ↑ Historique. Association Bernard Gregory, accessed April 1, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Kirstie Urquhart: The Association Bernard Gregory. Science , October 17, 2003, accessed October 18, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Gregory, Bernard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gregory, Bernard Paul; Grégory, Bernard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physicist and director general of CERN and CNRS
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Bergerac , Dordogne department , France
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1977
Place of death Élancourt , Yvelines department , France