Jacques Prentki
Jacques Prentki (* 1920 in Lyon ; † 2009 ) was a Polish-French physicist at CERN .
Prentki had a Polish mother. After his father, who worked in the Congo, died in 1939, the family returned to Poland. During the German occupation, he attended the underground university in Warsaw and narrowly escaped deportation to a concentration camp. After the war he studied physics in Lublin and Warsaw and went to Paris in 1947, where he worked for the CNRS at the Institut Henri Poincaré and the École polytechnique . He belonged to a group of physicists in Alexandru Proca's seminar who dealt with elementary particle physics. This also included Bernard d'Espagnat , with whom he went to CERN in 1955 as one of the first theorists , where he stayed for the rest of his career and continued to work after his retirement. 1967 to 1970 and 1975 to 1982 he was head of the theory department. He was also a professor at the Collège de France from 1964 to 1983 .
He stayed in contact with Poland throughout his life, even if he was almost arrested as a spy while visiting his mother in the 1950s - the advocacy of a well-known biologist saved him.
He dealt with nuclear physics, symmetries in elementary particle physics and with the weak interaction. Besides D'Espagnat also worked with Abdus Salam and Martinus Veltman . At CERN he was in close contact with experimental physicists such as Georges Charpak , Charles Peyrou , and Paul Musset.
In 1976 he received the Prix Félix Robin .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Prentki, Jacques |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1920 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lyon |
| DATE OF DEATH | 2009 |