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

1990

1954

Teachers

1951

Participants :
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

Attendees

This table records attendees who later went on to receive either the Nobel prize for physics or the Fields medal.


Attendee	Year(s) attended École de physique des Houches	Prize	Year prize awarded
Philip W. Anderson	1967	Nobel prize	1977
Alain Aspect	1982, 2016	Nobel prize	2022
John Bardeen	1956	Nobel prize	1956, 1972
Nicolaas Bloembergen	1964	Nobel prize	1981
Aage Bohr	1955	Nobel prize	1975
Owen Chamberlain	1957	Nobel prize	1959
Steven Chu	1999	Nobel prize	1997
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji	1955, 1964	Nobel prize	1997
Alain Connes	1970	Fields medal	1982
Leon Neil Cooper		Nobel prize	1972
Eric Allin Cornell	1999	Nobel prize	2001
François Englert	1979	Nobel prize	2013
Enrico Fermi	1954	Nobel prize	1938
Albert Fert	2012	Nobel prize	2007
Richard Feynman	1976	Nobel prize	1965
Roy J. Glauber	1954, 1964	Nobel prize	2005
Murray Gell-Mann	1952	Nobel prize	1969
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes	1953, 1967	Nobel prize	1991
David Gross	1975	Nobel prize	2004
F. Duncan M. Haldane	2008	Nobel prize	2016
Serge Haroche	1990	Nobel prize	2012
Gerardus t'Hooft	1975	Nobel prize	1999
J. Hans D. Jensen	1953	Nobel prize	1963
Alfred Kastler	1951	Nobel prize	1966
Wolfgang Ketterle	1999, 2010	Nobel prize	2001
Walter Kohn	1951, 1967	Nobel prize in Chemistry	1998
Willis Lamb	1964	Nobel prize	1955
Tsung-Dao Lee	1975	Nobel prize	1957
Anthony James Leggett	1985	Nobel prize	2003
Syukuro Manabe	1999	Nobel prize	2021
Arthur Bruce McDonald	1994	Nobel prize	2003
Ben Roy Mottelson	1958	Nobel prize	1975
Gérard Mourou	2015	Nobel prize	2018
Louis Néel	1956, 1961	Nobel prize	1970
Giorgio Parisi	2013, 2020, 2022	Nobel prize	1970
Wolfgang Pauli	1951, 1952, 1955	Nobel prize	1945
James Peebles	1979	Nobel prize	2019
Roger Penrose	1963	Nobel prize	2020
Arno Allan Penzias	1974	Nobel prize	1978
William Daniel Phillips	1999, 2010	Nobel prize	1997
Norman Foster Ramsey	1955	Nobel prize	1989
Abdus Salam	1957	Nobel prize	1979
Emilio Gino Segrè	1951	Nobel prize	1959
Brian P. Schmidt	1990	Nobel prize	2011
John Robert Schrieffer	1958	Nobel prize	1972
Julian Schwinger	1955	Nobel prize	1965
William Bradford Shockley	1953	Nobel prize	1956
Stanislav Smirnov	2010	Fields medal	2010
Jack Steinberger	1960	Nobel prize	1988
René Thom		Fields medal	1958
Kip Thorne	1963, 1966, 1972, 1982	Nobel prize	2017
David Thouless	1998, 2018	Nobel prize	2016
Charles Hard Townes	1955	Nobel prize	1964
Martinus Veltman	1976	Nobel prize	1999
Eugene Wigner	1955	Nobel prize	1963
Ken Wilson	1975	Nobel prize	1982
Ed Witten		Fields medal	1990
C.N. Yang	1957	Nobel prize	1957
Anton Zeilinger	2003	Nobel prize	2022