Pierre Victor Auger

Pierre Victor Auger ( born May 14, 1899 in Paris, † December 24, 1993 ) was a French physicist. He worked in the field of atomic and nuclear physics.

Especially to Auger dealt with the cosmic radiation, which he examined in detail in 1938 in the Swiss Jungfraujoch at 3,500 m altitude. With several detection devices in 300 m intervals, he succeeded to measure simultaneous events in adjacent detectors and so prove the origin of the cosmic particle showers.

In 1926, he discovered upon examination of the impact of X- rays with matter that bears his name Auger effect. However, this non-radiative transition was discovered in 1922 by the Austrian- Swedish physicist Lise Meitner.

Auger was from 1937 professor at the Sorbonne in Paris and from 1962 to 1967 Director General of the European Space Research Organization ( ESRO ). In 1961 he was awarded the International Antonio Feltrinelli Prize - 1971 with the Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science.

After the multinational Auger Pierre Auger Observatory is named, which researches since November 2005 in the Pampa Amarilla in Argentina with 1600 particle at 3,000 km ² and 24 fluorescence telescopes have the highest energy cosmic rays.