Francis Perrin (physicist)
Francis Perrin (born August 17, 1901 in Paris , † July 4, 1992 in Paris ) was a French physicist .
Perrin was the son of the Nobel laureate in physics, Jean-Baptiste Perrin, and studied at the École normal supérieure , where he received his licentiate in physics and mathematics in 1920 and in 1922 Agrégé des sciences physiques. In 1928 he received his doctorate at the Faculté des Sciences in Paris on the theory of Brownian motion (which was also his father's research topic). He was then at the Collège de France and in 1933 Maitre de conferences at the Sorbonne and was secretary of the French physical society. In 1935 he received the title of professor (without a chair). In the 1930s he worked on uranium fission, working with the group of Frédéric Joliot-Curie . In 1938 he recognized the possibility of a chain reaction in the fission of uranium and estimated the critical mass at 44 tonnes, with neutron reflectors at 13 tonnes, a value that was soon corrected downwards by Rudolf Peierls in England (but still in the range of tonnes During the occupation of France, like his father, he went to England and then to the USA, where he was visiting professor at Columbia University from 1941 to 1943 . From 1946 to 1972 he was professor of atomic and molecular physics at the Collège de France. In 1958 he was President of the Geneva International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. He was also on various CERN committees and on the International Solvay Committees for Physics (1933 and 1951 to 1974).
From 1951 he was the successor of Frederic Joliot-Curie (who lost his post because he was against military research on nuclear weapons and also a sympathizer of the communists) French High Commissioner for Atomic Energy (CEA, Commissariat de l energie atomique), which he remained until 1970 . During this time he was instrumental in organizing the then secret development work for a French atomic bomb. On February 3, 1960, the first explosion of a French nuclear weapon occurred in the Sahara.
He was president of the Union of Atheists (Union des Athées) in France. He was a member of the Académie des Sciences (1953) and a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1954), as well as the Brazilian, Spanish and Serbian Academies of Sciences. In 1952 he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala and in 1972 from Columbia University. In 1970 he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor and in 1967 the Ordre national du Mérite.
Perrin was married to Pierre Auger's sister , Colette Auger.
literature
- Francis Perrin , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 21/1971 of May 17, 1971, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Rhodes The making of the atomic bomb , Touchstone Books 1986, p. 321
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Perrin, Francis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 17th August 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th July 1992 |
| Place of death | Paris |