Gérard Mourou is a distinguished French physicist renowned for his transformative contributions to ultrafast laser technology and optical science. Born in Albertville, France in 1944, he completed his physics studies at the University of Grenoble and earned his PhD from Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris in 1973. His academic journey led him to the University of Rochester in 1977, where he established himself as a pioneering figure in laser physics, and later to the University of Michigan where he founded the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science in 1990. He subsequently returned to France as a professor at École Polytechnique before becoming a Chair Professor at Peking University, maintaining his position as a global leader in advanced laser research.
Mourou's most significant scientific achievement came through his co-invention of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) with Donna Strickland in 1985, a breakthrough technique that revolutionized high-intensity laser physics by enabling the creation of ultrashort-pulse, petawatt-level laser systems without destroying the amplifying material. This ingenious method, developed during Strickland's doctoral work, involves stretching a low-energy laser pulse, amplifying it, and then recompressing it to achieve unprecedented power levels that briefly exceed all the world's power stations combined. The CPA technique has enabled countless applications across scientific disciplines, most notably in precision laser eye surgery that has benefited millions of patients worldwide, and has become the foundational technology for modern high-intensity laser systems used in research laboratories globally.
Beyond his Nobel Prize-winning work, Mourou pioneered the field of ultrafast optical science and its applications across engineering and medical disciplines, with his research on laser filamentation in the atmosphere opening new pathways for atmospheric sensing and long-distance laser transmission. He first proposed the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) in 2005, which evolved into Europe's largest laser research initiative and one of the world's most advanced laser facilities, demonstrating his visionary leadership in shaping international scientific infrastructure. As both an educator and institution builder, Mourou has mentored generations of scientists while continuing to advance laser physics at Peking University, where his ongoing research seeks to push the boundaries of laser intensity and explore novel applications in fundamental physics and materials science.
