1968: Georges Charpak revolutionizes detection

In the 1960s, detection in particle physics mainly involved examining millions of photographs from bubble chambers or spark chambers. This was slow, labour intensive and not suitable for studies into rare phenomena.

However, the revolution in transistor amplifiers was to trigger new ideas. While a camera can detect a spark, a detector wire connected to an amplifier can detect a much smaller effect. In 1968, Georges Charpak developed the 'multiwire proportional chamber', a gas-filled box with a large number of parallel detector wires, each connected to individual amplifiers. Linked to a computer, it could achieve a counting rate a thousand times better than existing detectors. The invention revolutionized particle detection, which passed from the manual to the electronic era.

Charpak, who joined CERN in 1959, was later awarded the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on particle detectors, in particular for his invention of the multiwire proportional chamber.

Today practically every experiment in particle physics uses some track detector based on the principle of the multiwire proportional chamber. Charpak has also actively contributed to the use of this technology in many other fields that use ionizing radiation such as biology, radiology and nuclear medicine.