Louis Leprince-Ringuet 1901-2000 A Scientist in the service of Europe

The renowned French physicist, Louis Leprince-Ringuet, writer, painter and sportsman, who would have been 100 in the spring, died in Paris on 23 December 2000. A convinced European, Louis Leprince-Ringuet supported the creation of CERN. From 1956, he was Vice-Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee, later becoming its Chairman from 1964 to 1966.
After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique, Louis Leprince-Ringuet began his career in telecommunications as an engineer working on submarine cables. His vocation as a physicist emerged in 1929 when he met Maurice de Broglie, director of a laboratory studying X-rays. For ten years Louis Leprince-Ringuet worked as de Broglie's assistant before moving into the field of cosmic ray research. As director of a research centre devoted to nuclear physics and cosmic rays at the Ecole Polytechnique, he took part in the 1930s in elucidating the nature of these rays, which had previously been unknown. His team pioneered the use of bubble chambers and the observation of heavy cosmic ray particles. His laboratory spawned many great talents of physics including Bernard Gregory who went on to become Director-General of CERN.

Louis Leprince-Ringuet (right) in 1963, when he was Vice-Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee, with Francis Perrin one of CERN's founding fathers.

In 1949 Louis Leprince-Ringuet became a member of the Académie des Sciences where he devoted his energies to the Europe-wide expansion of subatomic physics in his conviction that France and Europe must equip themselves with large science facilities. He was a member of the management of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique which was founded in 1951, was involved in the creation of CERN and advocated the construction of the Saturne accelerator at Saclay, near Paris. On the death of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, he took over the chair of nuclear physics at the Collège de France in 1959 and the directorship of his laboratory until his retirement in 1972. Louis Leprince-Ringuet knew how to bring science to the general public and published may books of popular science and on the history of science. He was a Member of the Académie Française from 1966 and was a brilliant penner of pamphlets covering such diverse concerns as ecology and sustainable sources of energy. He was also a pioneer in advocating science at the service of mankind. In his free time he was a talented painter, an excellent skier and a brilliant tennis player, continuing to play matches into his nineties.