by Georges Charpak, Odile Jacob. Paperback ISBN 9782738121844, €23.
Eighty-five years and at least three lives’ worth of living unfold in the three sections of these memoirs by Georges Charpak with the contributions from François Vannucci, Roland Omnès and Richard L Garwin.
Uprooted as a child from his native town on the Polish–Ukrainian border during the anti-Semite persecutions of the Russian civil war, he narrates the tribulations of a central-European immigrant in the first part of the book, entitled “Déraciné” (Uprooted). This is the account of his incredible early destiny, from his arrival in France at the age of seven, through his brilliant secondary studies in Paris to his engagement in the struggle against Fascism and subsequent imprisonment, and finally his survival of deportation to Dachau.
Charpak’s career as a physicist “started at age 24 and was more complex than that of most young French scientists”. This sets off the second part “Physicien”, which is entirely devoted to physics and – through the account of his career – a golden age of physics. After liberation, he first joined the Ecole des Mines (“not the right choice,” he says on p24) before finally moving to the laboratory of Frédéric Joliot Curie at the Collège de France, where he specialized in particle detection. A detailed account follows of all the steps in the invention of the multiwire chamber, from Curie’s lab through Charpak’s career at CERN to applications in medicine. This is all complete with images, anecdotes and original documents. “One of the ambitions of the book,” Charpak writes on the back cover, “is to show the extraordinary construction of particle physics in the space of one century”. For this reason he asked Vannucci to write an in-depth but accessible explanation of the meaning of the Standard Model, which is included in this section.
Another objective of the book is to “throw light on the imminent threat to all the treasures accumulated by civilizations over thousands of years, if we do not change radically the way that mankind manages its material and spiritual richness, its creativity and the education we give to children”. The last part, “Citoyen du monde” (Citizen of the world), written with Richard Garwin, details another chapter of Charpak’s life, devoted to the teaching of science to the young and towards the cause of total nuclear disarmament – “le danger toujours plus pressant … non seulement pour la paix mais pour la survie même de l’humanité” (the most pressing danger, not only for peace but for the survival of mankind).
Personal anecdotes provide another enjoyable feature of the book. As Charpak says, he “did not hesitate to describe … his short-term dreams”, such as his research on fossil sound in ancient objects and his attempts to sell a comedy scenario inspired by Dr Strangelove to Hollywood.
