Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1997, has died at the age of 93

French physicist Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in 1997 for his work on the cooling of atoms, died Thursday at the age of 93, his family announced to AFP on Friday.

Professor at the Collège de France and member of the Academy of Sciences, he received the Nobel Prize jointly with the Americans Steven Chu and William D. Phillips, for the development of methods used to cool and confine atoms using lasers.

“Spectacular progress”

The research has “enabled spectacular progress in the field of cold atoms”, particularly in the precision of atomic clocks, underlines the Kastler Brossel Laboratory, a joint research unit of the École Normale Supérieure, Sorbonne University, the Collège de France and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he worked for a long time.

Born on April 1, 1933 in Constantine (Algeria), Professor Cohen-Tannoudji also played an important role in the promotion of atomic physics and quantum optics, passing on his knowledge to many young physicists, including French Nobel Prize winners Serge Haroche and Alain Aspect. On the occasion of his Nobel Prize, Jacques Chirac, then President of the Republic, praised him as “the teacher” whose courses and publications “excited, year after year, students and researchers”.