- Person
- Georges Charpak
- Lived
- 1924–2010
- Field
- Particle physics, detectors
- From
- Polish-born French
The story
Georges Charpak, a Polish-born Jewish physicist who survived Dachau and won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the wire chamber, spent his later years on a cause far from the particle accelerator: teaching young children science.
In the mid-1990s he discovered that only about 3 per cent of French primary schools introduced their pupils to science. With two fellow members of the French Academy of Sciences, the astrophysicist Pierre Léna and the physicist Yves Quéré, and with a delegation from the Ministry of Education, he organised a study trip to Chicago to see the hands-on science programme that his friend, the physicist Leon Lederman, had started in the city’s schools. The American approach used experiments, observation and questioning to fight school failure in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
On their return, in 1996, they launched La main à la pâte, literally “hands in the dough”. Working with the Ministry of Education, the team trained and supported teachers, provided scientific and teaching resources for classrooms, and for the first time mobilised scientists to help primary school teachers. The programme started with 350 classes and within a year had the support of more than a thousand. In 2000 the Minister of Education decided to bring science teaching inspired by La main à la pâte to all schoolchildren, and in 2002 the approach was written into the new national primary curriculum.
La main à la pâte became a foundation in 2011. Its network of pilot centres, more than half of whose classes are in priority education zones, supports more than 5,000 classes a year, and its international work with organisations such as UNESCO and the InterAcademy Partnership has carried the approach abroad. When Charpak died in 2010, UNESCO’s director-general called him a visionary whose contribution to international scientific cooperation still had a powerful impact.
Why it matters
Generations of schoolchildren in France, and in other countries that adopted the approach, have learned science by doing experiments thanks to the programme Charpak co-founded.
About Georges Charpak
Resistance fighter and Dachau survivor whose wire chamber transformed particle physics and led to low-dose X-ray imaging; he also brought hands-on science to French primary schools. Nobel Prize 1992.
More about Georges Charpak
Sources
- History of the Fondation La main à la pâte Fondation La main à la pâte
- UNESCO chief pays tribute to Nobel physics laureate Georges Charpak UN News
- Georges Charpak 1924–2010 CERN Courier
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.