Perrin, Francis

Born Aug. 17, 1901, in Paris. French physicist. Member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris (1953).

The son of J. B. Perrin, Perrin graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1922. He became affiliated with the University of Paris in 1923 and was a professor there from 1933 to 1946. Between 1941 and 1943 he was a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. He was a professor at the Collège de France from 1946 to 1951. Perrin held the post of high commissioner of atomic energy from 1951 to 1970. His principal works deal with fluorescence, Brownian motion (together with J. B. Perrin), and nuclear physics.