Georg Placzek (1905–1955), a native of Brno and world-renowned physicist, was not only a witness to but also an active participant in many events and discoveries that symbolise the dawn of the atomic age, with numerous consequences for our post-war history and the present day. In this lecture, Aleš Gottvald, CSc., a long-time employee of the Academy of Sciences, we will explore the novelistic life journey of Georg Plack as a leading internationally established theoretical physicist, as a member of a remarkable Jewish-Moravian industrialist family with a tragic wartime fate, and as a colourful personality highly respected among his renowned colleagues. Admission is voluntary.