Summer, 1972, discussion in main lecture hall. From left, Yuval Ne'eman, Bryce DeWitt, Kip Thorne, Demetrios Christodoulou.

Les Houches School of Physics (French: École de physique des Houches) is an international physics center dedicated to seasonal schools and workshops. It is located in Les Houches, France. The school was founded in 1951 by French scientist Cécile DeWitt-Morette.[1]

Between its participants there have been famous Nobel laureates in Physics like Enrico Fermi, Wolfgang Pauli, Murray Gell-Mann and John Bardeen amongst others.[1] According to former director of the school, Jean Zinn-Justin, the school is the "mother of all modern schools of physics”.[1]

Since 2017, it is a Joint Research Service (French: Unité mixte de service, UMS) of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Grenoble Alpes University.[2] In 2020, it was recognized as a EPS Historic Site by the European Physical Society (EPS).[1]

History

The school was founded by Cécile DeWitt-Morette in 1951. She was 29 years old at the time, had married physicist Bryce DeWitt a week before, and was still a postdoctoral researcher in the United States.[3] The school was created as an after World War II effort to improve the level of modern physics in Europe, that was lagging behind the United States.[1] She was inspired by her experience at the girls scouts and 1949 Richard Feynman's Ann Arbor annual Summer Symposium, at the University of Michigan, which DeWitt-Morette attended.[3]

She quickly gathered the institutional and financial support of Pierre Victor Auger (then director of the Natural Sciences Department at UNESCO), the CNRS, Albert Châtelet (dean of faculty of physics of the University of Paris) and Pierre Donzelot in charge of the French Ministry of Education.[3] With a reduced budget, she settled to open the school in a rusty farm surrounded by chalets, a few kilometers from the village of Les Houches.[3]

The school was publicized by her French colleagues: Yves Rocard at the École normale supérieure, Louis Leprince-Ringuet at École polytechnique, Louis de Broglie and Alexandre Proca at the Institut Henri Poincaré, and Francis Perrin at the Collège de France and CEA who hired a secretary to handle the paperwork.[3] Louis Néel acquired the patronage of the Grenoble faculty of science in order for the school to be legally attached to the University of Grenoble.[3] DeWitt-Morette also obtained international support from J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Julian Schwinger and Victor Weisskopf.[3]

The first session in 1951 was attended by young French professors like Pierre Grivet, Alfred Kastler and Théo Kahan, as well as by famous physicists from abroad including Walter Heitler, Léon van Hove, Emilio Segrè, Walter Kohn and Wolfgang Pauli.[3] The first lessons were given by Van Hove on quantum mechanics.[1]

Up until the 1960s, the students at the school were cut off from the outside world with the bare minimum in amenities.[3] Nobel laureate Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, a student in 1955, recalled[3]

It was extremely spartan ... We were lodged in small wooden chalets, barely furnished. The classroom was an old chalet slightly below. We sat on canvas chairs, the chalkboard was primitive, discussions happened outside, on the pastures. It was rough, but at the same time very charming, very bonne franquette, an extremely pleasant atmosphere.[4]

Yves Rocard and Maurice Lévy, inspired by the school, founded a summer school in Cargèse, Corsica, which they called the '‘Les Houches on the beach".[3] Subsequently, more scientific summer school opened all over Europe following the same model, partly with the support of Advanced Study Institutes program of NATO.[3]

In its early years, it caused some controversy in politics, with the French Communist Party accusing the school of US espionage and interference.[3] A counter-school project against the allegedly Americanized Les Houches school was considered but it was short-lived.[3]

In 1977, a physics centre was created specialised for shorter conferences, all year round. In 1988, a pre-doctoral school was opened young researchers entering into their PhD theses.[5]

Attendees

This table records attendees who later went on to receive either the Nobel Prize in Physics or the Fields Medal.[6]

AttendeeYear(s) attendedPrizeYear prize awarded
Pierre Agostini 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics 2023
Philip W. Anderson1967 Nobel Prize in Physics1977
Alain Aspect1982, 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics2022
John Bardeen1956 Nobel Prize in Physics1956, 1972
Nicolaas Bloembergen1964 Nobel Prize in Physics1981
Aage Bohr1955 Nobel Prize in Physics1975
Owen Chamberlain1957 Nobel Prize in Physics1959
Steven Chu1999 Nobel Prize in Physics1997
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji1955, 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics1997
Alain Connes1970Fields Medal1982
Leon Neil CooperNobel Prize in Physics1972
Eric Allin Cornell1999Nobel Prize in Physics2001
François Englert1979Nobel Prize in Physics2013
Enrico Fermi1954Nobel Prize in Physics1938
Albert Fert2012Nobel Prize in Physics2007
Richard Feynman1976Nobel Prize in Physics1965
Roy J. Glauber1954, 1964Nobel Prize in Physics2005
Murray Gell-Mann1952Nobel Prize in Physics1969
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes1953, 1967Nobel Prize in Physics1991
David Gross1975Nobel Prize in Physics2004
F. Duncan M. Haldane2008Nobel Prize in Physics2016
Serge Haroche1990Nobel Prize in Physics2012
Gerardus t'Hooft1975Nobel Prize in Physics1999
J. Hans D. Jensen1953Nobel Prize in Physics1963
Alfred Kastler1951Nobel Prize in Physics1966
Wolfgang Ketterle1999, 2010Nobel Prize in Physics2001
Walter Kohn1951, 1967Nobel prize in Chemistry1998
Willis Lamb1964Nobel Prize in Physics1955
Tsung-Dao Lee1975Nobel Prize in Physics1957
Anthony James Leggett1985Nobel Prize in Physics2003
Anne L'Huillier 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics 2023
Syukuro Manabe1999Nobel Prize in Physics2021
Arthur Bruce McDonald1994Nobel Prize in Physics2003
Ben Roy Mottelson1958Nobel Prize in Physics1975
Gérard Mourou2015Nobel Prize in Physics2018
Louis Néel1956, 1961Nobel Prize in Physics1970
Giorgio Parisi2013, 2020, 2022Nobel Prize in Physics1970
Wolfgang Pauli1951, 1952, 1955Nobel Prize in Physics1945
James Peebles1979Nobel Prize in Physics2019
Roger Penrose1963Nobel Prize in Physics2020
Arno Allan Penzias1974Nobel Prize in Physics1978
William Daniel Phillips1999, 2010Nobel Prize in Physics1997
Norman Foster Ramsey1955Nobel Prize in Physics1989
Abdus Salam1957Nobel Prize in Physics1979
Emilio Gino Segrè1951Nobel Prize in Physics1959
Brian P. Schmidt1990Nobel Prize in Physics2011
John Robert Schrieffer1958Nobel Prize in Physics1972
Julian Schwinger1955Nobel Prize in Physics1965
William Bradford Shockley1953Nobel Prize in Physics1956
Stanislav Smirnov2010Fields Medal2010
Jack Steinberger1960Nobel Prize in Physics1988
René ThomFields Medal1958
Kip Thorne1963, 1966, 1972, 1982Nobel Prize in Physics2017
David Thouless1998, 2018Nobel Prize in Physics2016
Charles Hard Townes1955Nobel Prize in Physics1964
Martinus Veltman1976Nobel Prize in Physics1999
Eugene Wigner1955Nobel Prize in Physics1963
Ken Wilson1975Nobel Prize in Physics1982
Ed WittenNobel Prize in Physics1990
C.N. Yang1957Nobel Prize in Physics1957
Anton Zeilinger2003Nobel Prize in Physics2022

Prize

The Cecile DeWitt-Morette, Ecole de Physique des Houches Prize is awarded annually since 2019. It is awarded to scientists, less than 55 year old, from any nationality, who has made a remarkable contribution to physics and have attended the school as a lecturer or student. The jury is composed of members of the French Academy of Sciences. Since 2023, it is called the Cécile DeWitt-Morette / Ecole de Physique des Houches / Fundation CFM for Research prize.

The laureates are:

Year Laureate Institution Field
2019 Francesca Ferlaino University of Innsbruck Cold atomic gases[7]
2020 Juan Maldacena Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University Quantum gravity, string theory and quantum field theory[8]
2021 Frédéric Caupin Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 Water under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature[9]
2023 Nathalie Picqué Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics Experimental optics, molecular physics and spectroscopy[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 van Tiggelen, Bart (13 October 2020). "École de Physique des Houches has become EPS Historic Site". European Physical Society. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  2. ↑ Alpes, Université Grenoble. "La nouvelle unité mixte de service". Newsroom - Université Grenoble Alpes (in French). Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Verschueren, Pierre (2019). "Cécile Morette and the Les Houches summer school for theoretical physics; or, how Girl Scouts, the 1944 Caen bombing and a marriage proposal helped rebuild French physics (1951–1972)". The British Journal for the History of Science. 52 (4): 595–616. doi:10.1017/S0007087419000505. ISSN 0007-0874.
  4. ↑ Archimède (television show), Arte, 30 October 2001.
  5. ↑ Rivet, Sophie. "History of the School". Ecole des Houches. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  6. ↑ Peyla, Philippe. "Nobel Prizes and Fields Medalists". Ecole des Houches. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  7. ↑ Peyla, Philippe. "2019 Prize: Francesca Ferlaino". Ecole des Houches. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  8. ↑ Peyla, Philippe. "2020 Prize: Juan Martin Maldacena". Ecole des Houches. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  9. ↑ Peyla, Philippe. "2021 Prize: Frédéric Caupin". Ecole des Houches. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  10. ↑ Peyla, Philippe. "2023 Prize: Nathalie Picque". Ecole des Houches. Retrieved 2023-12-20.

45°53′56″N 6°46′12″E / 45.8989°N 6.7701°E / 45.8989; 6.7701

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