Benvenuti, the inventor of the panels, has been working on vacuum technology at CERN since the 1970s.

FORBES: CERN Provides Geneva International Airport With Solar Panels

Working out why vacuum energy is not so vast has been a problem for physics ever since.

ECONOMIST: Cosmology

He spent most of his final 37 years on Cape Breton, working on projects as varied as the vacuum jacket (a forerunner of the iron lung), man-carrying tetrahedral kites and, most famously, the hydrofoil.

FORBES: Magazine Article