French nuclear physicist and educator. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and former student of Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize in physics) and Jean Brossel, who supervised his doctoral dissertation. His entire scientific career was spent at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, working in the laboratory which now bears the name of these two scientists.
After passing the physics aggregation in 1957, Cohen entered the CNRS in 1960. From 1962 on, he trained numerous French and foreign researchers, supervising doctoral dissertations and teaching graduate courses at the University of Paris VI. In 1973, he became professor and chairman of the nuclear and molecular physics department of the Collège de France. He teaches courses on different subjects each year.
With Bernard Diu and Franck Laloë, Cohen published a two-volume opus on quantum mechanics, which has been translated into German and English and serves as reference to students and researchers worldwide. He has also written two books with two former students, Jacques Dupont-Roc and Gilbert Grynberg, on quantic electrodynamics and on matter-radiation interactions. Both works have been translated into English.
On 10/15/1997, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Steven Chu and William D. Phillips. They received the award for their development of techniques that use laser light to cool atoms to extremely low temperatures.
Cohen-Tannoudji married Jacqueline Veyrat on 11/24/1958; three children.
(CNRS = French National Center for Scientific Research.)
Link to Wikipedia biography