George Claude
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031057
It’s the birthday of George Claude, who was born in 1870 in Paris. Claude studied at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (EPSCI) in Paris before joining an engineering company. He went on to make several discoveries and inventions of industrial importance, including the liquefaction of air, the safe storage of acetylene and neon lighting. After Nazi Germany defeated his native France in May 1940, Claude became a public proponent of French collaboration with Germany and an adviser to the puppet Vichy government. He was imprisoned after the war for his treachery. When he was released in 1950, he was forbidden to work on all but one of his previous lines of research: the conversion of the ocean’s thermal energy into electricity.
Date in History: 24 September 1870
