Georges Charpak — physicist with roots in the Poland/USSR
Georges Charpak (1 August 1924, Dąbrowica, Poland - 29 September 2010, Paris) was a French physicist. He was imprisoned by the Vichy authorities in 1943 and deported to Dachau in 1944, where he remained until 1945. He worked at CERN from 1959 to 1991 and received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber.
"The family moved to Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, when he was about three, then to Paris in 1931; he became a French citizen in 1946."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Dąbrowica, Wołyń Voivodeship, Poland (now Dubrovytsia, Ukraine)
Charpak was born in 1924 in Dąbrowica, then in the Wołyń Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic. The town had been part of the Russian Empire's Volhynian Governorate from 1805 until the First World War. His Jewish parents, Maurice and Anna Charpak, lived there, but their birthplaces are not given in the sources consulted.
Dąbrowica, Wołyń Voivodeship, Poland (now Dubrovytsia, Ukraine). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.
A career defined by ambition
"Physics is not just for physicists. It is for everyone who wants to understand the world."