Gerard Mourou

Gérard Mourou
Born	Gérard Albert Mourou 22 6, 1944
Birthplace	Albertville, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Physicist, academic
Title	Chair Professor (Peking University); A.D. Moore Distinguished University Professor Emeritus (University of Michigan)
Employer	Peking University, École Polytechnique (emeritus), University of Michigan (emeritus)
Known for	Chirped pulse amplification, ultrafast laser science
Education	Ph.D. in Physics, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (2018), Golden Goose Award (2022)

Gérard Albert Mourou (born 22 June 1944) is a French physicist and pioneer in the field of laser science, best known as the co-inventor of chirped pulse amplification (CPA), a technique that made it possible to generate ultrashort, extremely high-intensity laser pulses. For this work, Mourou was awarded one-half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with his former doctoral student Donna Strickland, while the other half was awarded to Arthur Ashkin for his invention of optical tweezers. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Mourou has held professorships at the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan, and the École Polytechnique in France. In 2024, he joined Peking University in Beijing as a chair professor, where he has stated his intention to pursue research on extreme light for applications in medicine and energy. The chirped pulse amplification technique that Mourou and Strickland developed in the 1980s has had far-reaching consequences across scientific disciplines, enabling advances in corrective eye surgery, industrial manufacturing, and fundamental physics research, and has been described as enabling "the most powerful laser pulses known to humanity."

Early Life

Gérard Mourou was born on 22 June 1944 in Albertville, a commune in the Savoie department of southeastern France, situated in the French Alps. Albertville would later gain international recognition as the host city of the 1992 Winter Olympics. Mourou grew up in France during the postwar period, a time of significant reconstruction and modernization across the country.

Details about Mourou's immediate family and childhood upbringing are not extensively documented in publicly available sources. What is known is that he developed an early interest in the physical sciences, which would guide his academic trajectory from secondary education through to doctoral studies in Paris. France's strong tradition in optics and physics—dating back to figures such as Augustin-Jean Fresnel and Alfred Kastler—provided an intellectual environment that nurtured young scientists with interests in light and its properties.

Education

Mourou pursued his higher education in France, ultimately earning his doctorate in physics from the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (now part of Sorbonne University) in Paris. His doctoral work focused on laser physics, a field that was still relatively young at the time, having been inaugurated by Theodore Maiman's demonstration of the first working laser in 1960. Mourou's graduate training in one of France's leading research universities provided him with a strong foundation in optics, electrodynamics, and experimental physics—skills that would prove essential to his later breakthroughs in ultrafast laser science.

Following the completion of his doctoral studies, Mourou moved to the United States, where he would spend the majority of his professional career at leading American research universities.

Career

University of Rochester and the Invention of Chirped Pulse Amplification

Mourou joined the faculty at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, where he became affiliated with the university's renowned Laboratory for Laser Energetics and its optics program. It was at Rochester, during the mid-1980s, that Mourou and his doctoral student Donna Strickland made the breakthrough that would ultimately earn them the Nobel Prize: the development of chirped pulse amplification.

Prior to CPA, the amplification of ultrashort laser pulses to high energies was fundamentally limited by the damage thresholds of the amplifying materials. When extremely short laser pulses were amplified directly, they could reach intensities high enough to destroy the optical components of the laser system itself. This presented a seemingly intractable barrier to generating the high-power, ultrashort pulses that physicists desired for a range of experiments and applications.

Mourou and Strickland devised an elegant solution to this problem. In the CPA technique, an ultrashort laser pulse is first temporally stretched—or "chirped"—using a pair of diffraction gratings or optical fiber, which disperses the different wavelength components of the pulse so that it becomes much longer in duration and correspondingly lower in peak intensity. This stretched pulse can then be safely amplified to high energies without damaging the amplifier components. After amplification, the pulse is recompressed back to its original ultrashort duration using a complementary set of gratings, resulting in a pulse of extremely high peak power.

Strickland and Mourou published their landmark paper describing the CPA technique in 1985, while Strickland was still a graduate student working under Mourou's supervision at Rochester. The technique represented a paradigm shift in laser science. By decoupling the processes of temporal compression and energy amplification, CPA made it possible to generate laser pulses with peak powers many orders of magnitude greater than anything previously achievable. The Nobel Committee would later characterize these as "the most powerful laser pulses known to humanity."

The development of CPA at Rochester transformed the field of high-intensity laser physics virtually overnight. Within a few years, laboratories around the world adopted the technique, leading to a proliferation of tabletop terawatt and even petawatt laser systems—instruments that had previously required building-sized facilities, if they were achievable at all.

University of Michigan

Mourou subsequently moved to the University of Michigan, where he held the title of A.D. Moore Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. At Michigan, Mourou continued his research on ultrafast laser science and its applications, building one of the world's leading groups in high-intensity laser physics.

During his time at Michigan, Mourou and his collaborators pursued a wide range of applications for CPA-based laser systems. One particularly significant area of applied research involved the use of ultrafast lasers for ophthalmic surgery. Working with colleagues including Tibor Juhasz, Ron Kurtz, and Detao Du, Mourou helped pioneer the application of ultrafast laser pulses to corrective eye surgery, contributing to the development of femtosecond laser-assisted procedures that have since been used to treat millions of patients worldwide.

Mourou's group at Michigan also explored the fundamental physics enabled by CPA lasers, including laser-plasma interactions, particle acceleration using laser fields, and the generation of extreme states of matter in laboratory settings. The Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS), which Mourou founded and directed at Michigan, became an internationally recognized hub for ultrafast laser research.

Mourou held the title of A.D. Moore Distinguished University Professor Emeritus following his retirement from the University of Michigan, retaining his affiliation with the institution.

École Polytechnique and European Research

Mourou also maintained strong ties to France throughout his career. He became a professor and researcher at the École Polytechnique, one of France's most prestigious grandes écoles, located in Palaiseau near Paris. At the École Polytechnique, Mourou was involved in research programs related to extreme light science and contributed to the development of European research infrastructure in high-intensity laser physics.

Mourou was instrumental in advocating for and developing large-scale laser facilities in Europe. He was a key proponent of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project, a pan-European initiative to build the world's most powerful laser systems for fundamental and applied research. ELI, which involves multiple pillars across several European countries, represented one of the most ambitious scientific infrastructure projects in the history of European physics.

Peking University and Extreme Light Research

In October 2024, it was reported that Mourou, at the age of 80, had relocated to Beijing to take up a position as chair professor at Peking University, one of China's most prominent research universities. The move attracted significant attention in both the scientific community and the broader media, as it represented one of the most high-profile appointments of a Western Nobel laureate at a Chinese institution.

Mourou stated that he intended to work on "extreme light for medical and energy fields" at Peking University. His research agenda at the university focuses on pushing the frontiers of laser intensity and exploring the potential of extreme light sources for practical applications, including novel approaches to medical treatment and energy generation. Mourou has long advocated for the exploration of laser-driven nuclear fusion and other energy applications as potential long-term benefits of advances in high-intensity laser physics.

The appointment at Peking University underscored China's growing investments in attracting top-tier international scientific talent and its ambitions in frontier areas of physics research.

Applications of Chirped Pulse Amplification

The chirped pulse amplification technique that Mourou co-invented has had an exceptionally broad range of applications across science, medicine, and industry. Beyond its foundational role in high-energy physics experiments and fundamental laser science, CPA technology has enabled practical advances in several domains.

In ophthalmology, femtosecond laser systems based on CPA principles have become standard tools for refractive eye surgery and cataract procedures. The ability to deliver extremely precise, ultrashort laser pulses allows surgeons to cut tissue with minimal thermal damage to surrounding areas, resulting in improved outcomes for patients. Mourou and his collaborators were among the first to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.

In oncology, research has explored the use of ultrahigh dose rate laser-driven radiation sources—enabled by CPA technology—for a technique known as FLASH radiotherapy (FLASH-RT), which delivers radiation at dose rates exceeding 40 Gy/s. Studies have investigated how such ultrahigh dose rates may affect biological processes at the cellular level, including mitochondrial DNA-related pathways.

In industrial manufacturing, CPA-based lasers are used for micromachining, precision cutting, and surface structuring of materials, taking advantage of the ultrashort pulse duration to achieve clean, precise material removal without significant heating.

In fundamental physics, CPA lasers have enabled the study of matter under extreme conditions, including the acceleration of electrons and ions to high energies, the generation of bright X-ray and gamma-ray sources, and the investigation of quantum electrodynamic phenomena in strong electromagnetic fields.

Personal Life

Mourou has maintained a relatively private personal life throughout his career. He has been based at various times in France and the United States, reflecting his dual academic affiliations. Following his appointment at Peking University in 2024, he relocated to Beijing.

In October 2018, shortly after the announcement of the Nobel Prize, a video featuring Mourou resurfaced on YouTube and attracted media attention. The video, described by The Guardian as "bizarre," generated some discussion in the press, though it did not involve matters related to his scientific work.

Mourou has been described as a mentor to numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers throughout his career, many of whom have gone on to establish their own research groups at universities around the world. His most prominent mentee, Donna Strickland, shared the Nobel Prize with him and became only the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Recognition

Nobel Prize in Physics (2018)

On 2 October 2018, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland would share one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses." The other half was awarded to Arthur Ashkin "for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems."

The Nobel Committee highlighted the transformative impact of chirped pulse amplification on both fundamental science and practical technology. The committee noted that the technique opened "new areas of research" and led to "broad industrial and medical applications," including the millions of corrective eye surgeries performed annually using ultrashort laser pulses.

Mourou's Nobel Prize made him one of a select number of French physicists to receive the distinction, placing him in a lineage that includes Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, Louis de Broglie, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, among others.

Golden Goose Award (2022)

In 2022, Mourou received the Golden Goose Award, shared with Donna Strickland, Tibor Juhasz, Ron Kurtz, and Detao Du, for their collective work in applying ultrafast lasers to the treatment of eye diseases. The Golden Goose Award recognizes scientists whose federally funded basic research has led to significant, often unexpected, societal benefits. The award acknowledged that the fundamental research into chirped pulse amplification—originally motivated by curiosity-driven physics—had yielded one of the most consequential medical technologies of the modern era.

Other Honors

Mourou has received numerous additional honors and awards throughout his career, including his election to several national and international academies of science. His appointment as a chair professor at Peking University in 2024 represented a further mark of recognition from the international scientific community.

Legacy

Gérard Mourou's principal scientific legacy rests on the invention and development of chirped pulse amplification, a technique that fundamentally altered the landscape of laser science and high-energy physics. Before CPA, the generation of high-intensity ultrashort laser pulses was effectively limited by the physical constraints of amplifier materials. Mourou and Strickland's innovation removed this bottleneck, enabling an entirely new regime of light-matter interaction studies and a host of practical applications that have affected millions of lives.

The impact of CPA extends across multiple scientific and technological domains. In medicine, CPA-based femtosecond lasers have become indispensable tools in ophthalmic surgery, with millions of LASIK and cataract procedures performed using these systems annually. In particle physics, CPA-driven laser systems have opened up novel approaches to particle acceleration, with laser-plasma accelerators achieving accelerating gradients orders of magnitude higher than conventional radio-frequency accelerators. In materials science, ultrashort-pulse lasers have enabled new methods of precision machining and surface modification.

Mourou's influence as a mentor and institution builder has also contributed to his legacy. The Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan, which he founded, trained generations of researchers who went on to lead their own programs worldwide. His advocacy for large-scale European laser facilities, including the Extreme Light Infrastructure project, helped shape the landscape of international scientific collaboration in photonics.

At age 80, Mourou's decision to join Peking University and continue research on extreme light for medical and energy applications demonstrated a sustained commitment to exploring the frontiers of laser science. His career trajectory—from the invention of CPA at the University of Rochester in the 1980s to ongoing research in Beijing in the 2020s—spans a period in which laser technology evolved from a laboratory curiosity into one of the defining technologies of modern science and industry.