André Guinier

André Guinier (1 August, 1911 – 3 July, 2000) was a French physicist and crystallographer who did pioneering work in the field of X-ray diffraction and solid-state physics.

He was credited for the discovery and developments of small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) into an indispensable tool for materials science and crystallography.

In 1939, Guinier discovered SAXS[5][6] and received his doctorate with a thesis on X-ray crystallography under Charles Mauguin.

He then worked at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where he became deputy director of the test laboratory in 1944 and further developed the SAXS technique along with his PhD student Gérard Fournet.

The Guinier-Preston zone was named after Guinier and the British physicist George Dawson Preston, who discovered and described the phenomenon independently around 1938.