Talk:Hans von Halban
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[edit] Some confusion
In the "Post-war" section, there is a confusion between the Saclay Laboratory, where Halban never was, and the "Université Paris-Sud" at Orsay, where he was indeed appointed as a help to Joliot-Curie to build the large electron linear accelerator, thus creating the "Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire" (LAL), one of the main present particle physics labs in France.
The confusion may stem from the fact that Joliot had been the head of the "Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique" (french Atomic Energy Commission), at its foundation in 1945, and then fired in 1950 for his communist ideas. He had remained professor at Collège de France, and succeeded his wife Irène in 1956 both as professor at the University of Paris and as the Director of the newly created Institut de Physique Nucléaire (Nuclear physics institute) - IPN - in Orsay. This institute, soon separated from the LAL, still is one of the prominent low-energy nuclear physics institutes in France[1].
So I propose to change beginning at the second paragraph of the section into :
After eight productive years at Oxford, Halban was invited back to France in 1954 by the Prime Minister, Pierre Mendès France to assist Joliot in directing the building of an electron linear accelerator laboratory in Orsay, south of Paris near Saclay, near the newly founded Institut de Physique Nucléaire.
He took up the appointment in 1955, following his divorce from his wife Aline, who shortly afterwards married Isaiah Berlin.
The laboratory developed into the "Linear Accelerator Laboratory" (LAL), still one major particle physics laboratories in France.
