Prix Nobel

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji was born in 1933 in Constantine. After studying four years at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he undertook the ‘agrégation’ (high level competitive examination for teaching) followed by a doctorate degree in 1962, with a thesis subject on the theory of optical pumping.
He pursued next a career with the CNRS, followed by a University professorship, before being elected in 1973 to the ‘Collège de France’. He became a member of the French Science Academy in 1981 and then of various other foreign academies. He received numerous awards and distinctions throughout his career, in particular the CNRS gold medal in 1996. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Prize with Steven Chu and
Williams D. Phillips for “development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light”. Claude Cohen-Tannoudji continues his research at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory.…

Serge Haroche
Serge Haroche was born in 1944 in Casablanca. After his studies at Ecole Normale
Supérieure and a PhD under the supervision of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, he joined
CNRS to work on atomic physics in the ENS Physics Department that he directed
from 1994 to 2000. Since 2001, Haroche has been a professor at the Collège de France and holds the Chair of Quantum Physics. He is a member of the Kastler Brossel Laboratory where he leads the Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics group.
In September 2012, Serge Haroche was elected by his peers to the position of administrator of the Collège de France just before being awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize, together with David Wineland, for their work on the manipulation of individual
quantum systems.

Alfred Kastler
Alfred Kastler est né à Guebwiller (Alsace, Empire allemand). Il intègre l’École Normale Supérieure de Paris en 1921. Après ses études, en 1926, il commence à enseigner la physique au lycée de Mulhouse, puis enseigne à l’Université de Bordeaux, où il sera professeur d’université jusqu’en 1941.
Georges Bruhat lui demande de revenir à l’École Normale Supérieure, où il obtient une chaire en 1952. En collaboration avec Jean Brossel, il y étudie la mécanique quantique, l’interaction entre la lumière et les atomes, et la spectroscopie. Alfred Kastler, travaillant sur une combinaison de résonance optique et la résonance magnétique, a développé la technique du « pompage optique ». Ces travaux ont conduit à l’achèvement de la théorie des lasers et des masers.
Il a obtenu le prix Nobel de physique en 1966 « pour la découverte et le développement de méthodes optiques pour l’étude des résonances hertziennes dans les atomes".