Pierre Victor Auger

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Pierre Auger, one of the ideological founders of the European Space Agency

Pierre Victor Auger (May 14, 1899 – December 25, 1993) was a French physicist, born in Paris. He worked in the fields of atomic physics, nuclear physics and cosmic ray physics.

The Auger process where Auger electrons are emitted from atoms was named after him, despite the fact that Lise Meitner discovered the process a few years before in 1923.

In his work with cosmic rays, he found that the cosmic radiation events were coincident in time meaning that they were associated with a single event, an air shower. He estimated that the energy of the incoming particle that creates large air showers must be at least 10¹⁵ electronvolts (eV) = 10⁶ particles of 10⁸ eV (critical energy in air) and a factor of ten for energy loss from traversing the atmosphere (Auger et al., 1939).

The world's largest cosmic ray detector, the Pierre Auger Observatory, is named after him.