Serge Haroche

Professor and Chair in Quantum Physics; Professor. Known for his work using Rydberg atoms to perform nondestructive measurements of individual photons. His techniques have made it possible to probe quantum mechanics in more detail than ever before. Using superconducting niobium, he creates the two most reflective mirrors ever achieved. With the mirrors placed about an inch apart, he introduces a single photon, which bounces back and forth for over a tenth of a second until it is eventually hits an imperfection in the mirror and is absorbed. Making it possible to effectively make a movie of the transition of a photon from one state to another, thus probing the collapse of the wave function with unprecedented precision and detail. Honors include the Grand Prix Jean Ricard of the French Physical Society (1983), the Einstein Prize for Laser science (1988), the Humboldt Award (1992), the CNRS Gold Medal (2009) and the Herbert Walter Prize of the German Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, and the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with David J. Wineland.