Born in Casablanca in 1944, Serge Haroche studied at the École normale supérieure (ENS).
He was a researcher at the CNRS, lecturer at the École Polytechnique, professor at the University of Paris-VI and member of the Institut de France. He taught for several years at Yale University in the United States, and visited several foreign universities as a researcher or visiting professor, including Stanford, Harvard, MIT and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. For five years, he headed the physics department at ENS.
Serge Haroche is a specialist in atomic physics and quantum optics. After completing a thesis on the dressed atom (1967-71) under the supervision of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, in the 1970s and 80s he developed new laser spectroscopy methods based on the study of quantum beats and superradiance. He then turned his attention to Rydberg atoms, giant atomic states whose sensitivity to microwaves makes them particularly well suited to fundamental studies of matter-radiation interaction. He showed that these atoms, coupled with superconducting cavities containing a few photons, are ideal systems for testing fundamental quantum laws and demonstrating quantum logic operations that hold great promise for information processing.
Appointed Professor of Quantum Physics at the Collège de France in 2001, Serge Haroche heads the electrodynamics of simple systems group within the Kastler Brossel laboratory of the ENS physics department.
Serge Haroche was appointed Administrator of the Collège de France on September1 2012.
Awards and honors
- 1983 : Jean Ricard Prize from the French Physical Society
- 1971 : Aimé Cotton Prize, Société Française de Physique
- 1988 : Einstein Prize for laser science
- 1992 : Humboldt Prize (Germany)
- 1993 : Franklin Institute Michelson Medal
- 2001 : Tomassoni Prize from La Sapienza University (Rome)
- 2002 : Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize of the European Physical Society
- 2002 : Quantum Communication Prize (Research Institute of Tamagawa University, Japan - 6th Massachussetts Institute of Technology International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computation
- 2007 : Charles Hard Townes Award from the Optical Society of America
- 2007 : Grand Cross of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit
- 2009 : CNRS Gold Medal
- 2009 : Winner of a Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council
- 2010 : Herbert Walther Prize from the German Physical Society and the Optical Society of America
- 2012 : Nobel Prize in Physics, also awarded to David J. Wineland
- Officer in the Order of the Legion of Honor
- Member of the French Academy of Sciences
- Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences
- Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
- Member of the European Academy of Sciences
- Fellow of the American Physical Society
