École de physique des Houches
L’École de Physique des Houches (the Physics School of Les Houches) was founded in 1951 by a young French scientist, Cécile DeWitt-Morette.
Historically the first lessons were given in 1951 by Léon Van Hove on quantum mechanics. The conditions were very spartan with the lessons lasting eight weeks in alpine chalets devoid of all comforts, a few kilometers from the village of Les Houches.
Soon, the school rapidly attracted the greatest names of modern physics, such as Enrico Fermi, Wolfgang Pauli, Murray Gell-Mann and John Bardeen amongst others. The young students, then unknown, included such future scientists as Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Georges Charpak, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, all future winners of the Nobel prize for Physics, as well as mathematician Alain Connes, future winner of the Fields medal.
Summer school sessions
July 1990 : quantum optics, non-linear optics and laser cooling
- Director : Jean Zinn-Justin
- Coorganisers of the school : Jean Dalibard and Jean-Michel Raimond
Teachers
Visitors
Notable participants
- Artur Ekert, Wolfson College, Oxford University, UK
- Daniel Hennequin Laboratoire de Spectroscopie Hertzienne, Université de Lille-Flandres-Artois, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
- Monika (Ritsch-)Marte, Institut für Theoretische Physik, University of Innsbruck, Austria
- Klaus Mølmer, Institute of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Olivier Pfister, Université Paris-Nord, Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, France
- Michael Schubert, University of Hamburg, Institut fur Experimentalphysik, Germany
- Andrew Steane, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, UK
- Kalle-Antti Suominen, University of Helsinki, Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Finland
Teachers
1951
- Participants :