Francis Perrin (17 August 1901 – 4 July 1992) was a French physicist,[1] who worked on nuclear physics, fission and neutrinos.

He was the high-commissioner Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (Atomic Energy Commission, CEA) in France and a collaborator of CERN.

Perrin actively supported the project for a European nuclear research centre, and was a signatory for France to the Convention establishing the CERN Provisional Council in February 1952 in Geneva.

[4][5] Named High-Commissioner of the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (Atomic Energy Commission, CEA) in 1951—to replace Frédéric Joliot-Curie dismissed because he was opposed to military research—, Francis Perrin joined a lobby of about a dozen people, composed of politicians like Chaban-Delmas, Bourguès-Maunoury and Félix Gaillard, of military officers, like the generals Ailleret, Gallois, and Crépin, of technocrats like Pierre Guillaumat and Raoul Dautry or of scientists like Yves Rocard and Bertrand Goldschmidt, who revealed themselves to be extremely effective.

When de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, the progress of the work was such that the date of the first nuclear test was already fixed at 1960.