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Cowan George (b. 1920-02-15 / d. 2012-04-20)
He was an American physical chemist, a businessman and philanthropist. Cowan received a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1941. He did graduate studies at Princeton, where he worked under future Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, whose investigation of uranium confirmed the feasibility of the Fermi pile. He continued his nuclear research with the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, Oak Ridge, Columbia University, and Los Alamos. Because he was transferred to various locations as a technological troubleshooter for the effort, he was among the very few people with knowledge of the separate components of the bomb, kept apart for security reasons. He joined the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946. He earned a Ph.D. from the Mellon College of Science in 1950. Weeks after his arrival at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1949, he directed the detection of radioactive fallout from samples collected near the Russian border indicating the Soviets were in possession of a nuclear bomb. He later served on the Bethe Panel that convinced government decision makers the radiochemistry detected represented weapons uses rather than peaceful pursuits.
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Born 1940-04-04. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Suicide
He claimed to be the Comte de Saint-Germain and appeared in numerous European television shows claiming to transmute lead into gold. In 1972 he met the singer Dalida, at the height of her fame. Her husband, Lucien Morisse, and her lover, Luigi Tenco, had both previously committed suicide. When Dalida met Chanfray, she quickly became infatuated. She recognized his paranoia, however: he slept with a shotgun under his bed. He also spent another year in prison, as well as being forced to pay FF 500,000 restitution, when he shot a man whom he found naked in his kitchen late one night. The man was only superficially wounded, and turned out to be the servant's lover. The incident marked the start of his decline. The couple ran out of money and Chanfray attempted music, painting, and sculpture, all without success. Dalida and Chanfray separated, but despite his problems, he continued to be a part of the celebrity society of Paris and Saint Tropez. He became the lover of the Trintignan "baroness", Paula de Loos, whose title was as false as his own. De Loos was, however, allegedly a millionaire and when Chanfray began to suspect the activities of de Loos's financial administrator, he threatened him with a rifle. He was again imprisoned and fined -- to which he looked to de Loos for help. She, however, was also heavily in debt. He last appeared in public at a party in Saint Tropez, in June 1983. He was reportedly very thin, with white hair and an exhausted appearance. In a town near Saint Tropez, Chanfray and de Loos committed suicide, ingesting barbiturates while inhaling the exhaust of his car. Nearby was a suicide note that read: "I leave and I bring her with me, because she is so like me..."