Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 awarded to French Alain aspect

Alain aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were distinguished by the Royal Academy of Swedish Sciences, Tuesday in Stockholm.

Le Monde

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to the French Alain Aspect, the American John F. Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger, announced Tuesday, October 4, the Royal Academy of Sciences.

The Prize honors pioneers of what Aube Appearance, Research Director emeritus at the CNRS and professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, likes to baptize the second quantum revolution. It opens a window on a strange, microscopic world, at the same time as on unexpected and spectacular applications. This quantum theory, developed during the interwar period, describes the world of matter, its particles, its atoms and its molecules. Its first revolution led to the invention of transistors, electronic chips, computers and mobile phones. She also gave birth to lasers or hard drives. It allows satellite geolocation thanks to high precision clocks.

awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the award was awarded last year to two experts in the modeling of climate change, the American-Japanese Syukuro Manabe and the German Klaus Hasselmann as well as the Italian Giorgio Parisi, specialist in complex physical systems.

Like the price of economics and other scientific prizes, the Nobel in physics suffers from a deficit in winners, but few names of women are among the speculations this year. Only four women have gained in physics since the creation of the prizes in 1901, the last being the American astrophysicist Andrea Ghez two years ago.

In an interview with the France-Presse agency after a very male 2021 season (12 men and a woman), the secretary general of the Swedish Academy of Sciences Göran Hansson had described as “sad” the small number of women winners, but rejected the idea of ​​quotas.

/Media reports.