Charpak, Georges (1924-...), a Polish-born French physicist, won the 1992 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of a device that detects subatomic particles, units of matter smaller than an atom, in particle accelerators, devices that hurl such particles together at extremely high energies. He revolutionized the study of subatomic particles with the multiwire chamber, a detector capable of recording millions of subatomic events per second and feeding precise data straight to computers without the need for human intervention. See Particle accelerator; Subatomic particle.