Cohen-Tannoudji was born inConstantine,French Algeria, to AlgerianSephardic Jewish parents Abraham Cohen-Tannoudji and Sarah Sebbah.[4][5][6][7] When describing his origins Cohen-Tannoudji said: "My family, originally fromTangier, settled in Tunisia and then in Algeria in the 16th century after having fled Spain during the Inquisition. In fact, our name, Cohen-Tannoudji, means simply the Cohen family from Tangiers. The Algerian Jews obtained the French citizenship in 1870 after Algeria became a French colony in 1830."[8]
In 1958 he married Jacqueline Veyrat, a high school teacher, with whom he has three children. His studies were interrupted when he wasconscripted into the army, in which he served for 28 months (longer than usual because of theAlgerian War). In 1960 he resumed working toward hisdoctorate, which he obtained from theÉcole Normale Supérieure under the supervision ofAlfred Kastler andJean Brossel at the end of 1962.[2]
After his dissertation, he started teachingquantum mechanics at theUniversity of Paris. From 1964-67, he was an associate professor at the university and from 1967-1973 he was a full professor.[2] His lecture notes were the basis of the popular textbook,Quantum Mechanics (French:Mécanique quantique), which he wrote with his colleaguesBernard Diu [fr] andFranck Laloë. He also continued his research work onatom-photon interactions, and his research team developed the model of thedressed atom.
In 1973, he became a professor at theCollège de France.[2] In the early 1980s, he started to lecture on radiative forces on atoms inlaser light fields. He also formed a laboratory there withAlain Aspect,Christophe Salomon, andJean Dalibard to study laser cooling and trapping. He even took a statistical approach to laser cooling with the use ofstable distributions.[9]
In 1976, he took sabbatical leave from the Collège de France, and lectured atHarvard University andMIT.[10][11] At Harvard, he was a Loeb Lecturer for two weeks,[12] and at MIT, he was a visiting professor.[13]
His work eventually led to theNobel Prize in physics in 1997 "for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light", shared withSteven Chu andWilliam Daniel Phillips.[14] Cohen-Tannoudji was the first physics Nobel prize winner born in an Arab country.[15]
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Gilbert Grynberg and Jacques Dupont-Roc.Introduction à l'électrodynamique quantique. (Photons and Atoms: Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics. 1997. Wiley.ISBN0-471-18433-0)
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Gilbert Grynberg and Jacques Dupont-Roc,Processus d'interaction photons-atomes. (Atoms-Photon Interactions: Basic Processes and Applications. 1992. Wiley, New-York.ISBN0-471-62556-6)
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. 2004.Atoms in Electromagnetic fields. 2nd Edition. World Scientific. Collection of his most important papers.
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