September 29, 2010

Georges Charpak (March 8, 1924 to September 29, 2010), a Polish physicist, received the Nobel Prize in 1992. With his Jewish family he arrived in France in 1931, and the son worked in the resistance til the Vichy government caught him and handed him over to the Germans. He spent the last year of the war at Dachau. He married Dominique Vidal in 1953 and they had sons and a daughter. He worked as a physicist at Cern from 1959 until 1991. According to his British Who's Who article, he "in 1968 invented [the] multiwire proportional chamber (linked to computers) for detecting particles in atom smashers."

Charpak co-authored Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons (2002). Here we learn about the pets left behind when Chernobyl was evacuated. No pets were rescued, they were all left behind at Chernobyl. This was because they had probably been outside and had extra radioactivity accumulated in their fur. The authors state:

The cats, with their tails straight up, stared at their masters with an imploring look, meowing pathetically; and dogs of many breeds were whining ...

Our physicist was not very observant of cats. If such a scene transpired the felines were complaining about their food. It is quite understandable that pets were left behind. I would have just liked some followup on their situation.