Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (; born 1 April 1933) is a French physicist at the École normale supérieure in Paris.

He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and William Daniel Phillips for research in methods of laser cooling and trapping atoms.

Early life Cohen-Tannoudji was born in Constantine, French Algeria, to Algerian Sephardic Jewish parents Abraham Cohen-Tannoudji and Sarah Sebbah. When describing his origins Cohen-Tannoudji said: "My family, originally from Tangier, settled in Tunisia and then in Algeria in the 16th century after having fled Spain during the Inquisition. In fact, our name, Cohen-Tannoudji, means simply the Cohen family from Tangiers. The Algerian Jews obtained the French citizenship in 1870 after Algeria became a French colony in 1830."

After finishing secondary school in Algiers in 1953, Cohen-Tannoudji left for Paris to attend the École Normale Supérieure.

Career

After his dissertation, he started teaching quantum mechanics at the University of Paris. From 1964-67, he was an associate professor at the university and from 1967-1973 he was a full professor.

In 1976, he took sabbatical leave from the Collège de France, and lectured at Harvard University and MIT. At Harvard, he was a Loeb Lecturer for two weeks, and at MIT, he was a visiting professor.

His work eventually led to the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 "for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light", shared with Steven Chu and William Daniel Phillips. Cohen-Tannoudji was the first physics Nobel prize winner born in an Arab country.

In 2015, Cohen-Tannoudji signed the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change on the final day of the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. The declaration was signed by a total of 76 Nobel Laureates and handed to then-President of the French Republic, François Hollande, as part of the successful COP21 climate summit in Paris.

Awards

1979 – Young Medal and Prize, for distinguished research in the field of optics. 1991 – Research Award of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 1993 – Charles Hard Townes Award 1994 – honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden 1996 – Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physical Society 1996 – CNRS Gold medal 1997 – Nobel Prize, for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. 2002 – Honorary Member of the Optical Society 2010 – Legion of Honour

Selected works The main works of Cohen-Tannoudji are given in his homepage.

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu, and Frank Laloë. 1973. Mécanique quantique. 2 vols. Collection Enseignement des Sciences. Paris. (Quantum Mechanics. Vol. I & II, 1991. Wiley, New-York, & ). Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Gilbert Grynberg and Jacques Dupont-Roc. Introduction à l'électrodynamique quantique. (Photons and Atoms: Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics. 1997. Wiley. ) Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Gilbert Grynberg and Jacques Dupont-Roc, Processus d'interaction photons-atomes. (Atoms-Photon Interactions: Basic Processes and Applications. 1992. Wiley, New-York. ) Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. 2004. Atoms in Electromagnetic fields. 2nd Edition. World Scientific. Collection of his most important papers.