File:Gérard_Mourou,_2014.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Gérard Mourou
Sign in to saveAlso known as G. Mourou, Gérard Albert Mourou, Gérard A. Mourou, G Mourou
French physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics 2018
Gérard Mourou is a French physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 for his groundbreaking work in the field of laser physics. His contributions to science have made him one of the most recognized figures in modern physics research.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Nobel Prize
- The Nobel Prize in Physics2018
“for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”
Shared · 1/4 portion
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Albert
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- France
- Place of birth
- Albertville
- Occupation
- researcher
- Educated at
- Grenoble Alpes University
- Employer
- University of Michigan
- Languages spoken
- French
- Academic degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Field of work
- optics
- Image
- Gérard Mourou, 2014.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- name in native language
- Gérard Mourou
- member of
- Romanian Academy
- date of birth
- 1944-06-22
- Commons category
- Gérard Mourou
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- WordLift URL
- data.thenextweb.com/tnw/entity/gerard_mourou
- student
- Donna Strickland
- interested in
- physics
Sources (8)
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Gérard Albert Mourou ( French: [ʒeʁaʁ muʁu]; born 22 June 1944) is a French scientist and pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, along with Donna Strickland, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique later used to create ultrashort-pulse, very high-intensity (petawatt) laser pulses.
In 1994, Mourou and his team at the University of Michigan discovered that the balance between the self-focusing refraction (see Kerr effect) and self-attenuating diffraction by ionization and rarefaction of a laser beam of terawatt intensities in the atmosphere creates "filaments" that act as waveguides for the beam, thus preventing divergence.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Gérard Mourou” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.