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André Guinier (1 August, 1911 – 3 July, 2000) was a French physicist and crystallographer who did pioneering work in the field of
X-ray diffraction X-ray diffraction is a generic term for phenomena associated with changes in the direction of X-ray beams due to interactions with the electrons around atoms. It occurs due to elastic scattering, when there is no change in the energy of the waves. ...
and
solid-state physics Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as solid-state chemistry, quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state phy ...
. He was credited for the discovery and developments of small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) into an indispensable tool for materials science and crystallography.


Education and career

Guinier was born in
Nancy, France Nancy is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the northeastern Departments of France, French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. It was the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine, which was Lorraine and Barrois, annexed by France under King Louis X ...
, his father Philibert Guinier was a botanist and director of the Nancy branch of the French National School of Forestry. Guinier studied at Lycée Henri-Poincaré before entering the
École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
(ENS), where he studied physics from 1930 to 1934. After graduation, he worked as an agrégé-preparateur in the physics laboratory of ENS. In 1939, Guinier discovered SAXS and received his doctorate with a thesis on X-ray crystallography under Charles Mauguin. He then worked at the
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers The (; ; abbr. CNAM) is an AMBA-accredited French ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement''. It is a member of the '' Conférence des Grandes écoles'', which is an equivalent to the Ivy League schools in the United States, Oxbridge in th ...
, where he became deputy director of the test laboratory in 1944 and further developed the SAXS technique along with his PhD student Gérard Fournet. In 1949 he became a professor at the
Sorbonne University Sorbonne University () is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to the Middle Ages in 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon as a constituent college of the Unive ...
. At the end of the 1950s, as its first dean, he was involved in the construction of the new university campus in Orsay, which later became the
University of Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (), also known as the University of Paris — XI (or as the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, ...
. During this period, he moved his research laboratory there from the center of Paris and founded the Laboratory for Solid State Physics ( Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, LPS) with Jacques Friedel and Raimond Castaing. Guinier became its first director when the LPS was assimilated into the
French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engi ...
. Guinier was president of the
International Union of Crystallography The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) is an organisation devoted to the international promotion and coordination of the science of crystallography. The IUCr is a member of the International Council for Science (ICSU). Objectives T ...
from 1969 to 1972. From 1968 to 1969, he was the founding editor of the Journal of Applied Crystallography. He was elected to the
French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...
in 1971 and won the Gregori Aminoff Prize in 1985. Guinier was elected member of the
Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...
in 1993.


Discoveries and inventions

In the field of
small-angle scattering Small-angle scattering (SAS) is a scattering technique based on deflection of collimated radiation away from the straight trajectory after it interacts with structures that are much larger than the wavelength of the radiation. The deflection is ...
, Guinier discovered the relationship of particle size to intensity which is called Guinier's Law. He developed the Guinier camera for use in X-ray diffraction and contributed to the development of the
electron microprobe An electron microprobe (EMP), also known as an electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) or electron micro probe analyzer (EMPA), is an analytical tool used to non-destructively determine the chemical composition of small volumes of solid materials. I ...
by Raimond Castaing. The Guinier-Preston zone was named after Guinier and the British physicist George Dawson Preston, who discovered and described the phenomenon independently around 1938.


Publications

* * * * * * * (translated from ) *


See also

*
Electron microprobe An electron microprobe (EMP), also known as an electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) or electron micro probe analyzer (EMPA), is an analytical tool used to non-destructively determine the chemical composition of small volumes of solid materials. I ...


References


External links


His recollections of his early workHis personal remembrances for the book "50 Years of X-ray Diffraction" (pg. 574)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guinier, Andre French physicists 1911 births 2000 deaths Academic staff of the University of Paris Academic staff of Paris-Sud University Members of the French Academy of Sciences École Normale Supérieure alumni Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research People from Nancy, France Presidents of the International Union of Crystallography Crystallographers