A lecture by Alain Aspect, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, at École Polytechnique
“I have merged my two loves, photons and atoms,” declared Alain Aspect, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, during his lecture at École Polytechnique on quantum entanglement and the non-locality revolution, taking his cue from Josephine Baker's famous song, « I have two loves, my country and Paris ». In so doing, he summed up a career that didn't end with the work that won him the Nobel Prize.
He might just as well have said: “I have two loves, research and teaching”, as he has demonstrated in his lectures and publications, both scholarly and popular (*).
“Everyone thinks I've only done one thing in my life, the Bell inequality test. It was my thesis subject and the question was completed in 1983... I'll let you calculate how many years ago. After that, I did a number of things that also fascinated me”, he said, referring in particular to his work with Philippe Grangier, who like him was a professor for many years at École Polytechnique, on the invention, development and demonstration of the world's first single photon source, or his collaboration with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Jean Dalibard and Christophe Salomon, which led to Claude Cohen-Tannoudji being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for his laser manipulation of atoms, and the creation of atomic optics at the Institut d'Optique.
“All this fed into my teaching, since for many years I taught two courses in quantum optics,” he recalled.
During the discussion with the audience at the end of his lecture, Alain Aspect was asked about the risk of a gap between the scientific community and civil society and its representatives, given the growing complexity of research and scientific advances. He felt that scientists were not to blame, but that it was necessary to question the place given to science by society.
“The problem is not the scientists. (...) It's not the fault of the scientists, it's the fault of society, which doesn't give to science the place it deserves. Listen to opinion leaders: when they talk about culture, all they think about is literature, music and painting. They never include science in the definition of culture. I think that science - I'm not saying knowing Schrödinger's equations - but knowing about scientific advances, is just as much a part of culture as knowing Victor Hugo or Monet or whoever...” said Alain Aspect.
“It's a societal problem, and it goes back to the fact that opinion leaders are most of the time people who did not get enough scientific training. You've got plenty of people talking to us about the energy problem, without even having in mind exactly what the conservation of energy is. It's appalling”, he said.
(*) including his popular work ”Einstein et les évolutions quantiques (Einstein and the Quantum Revolutions)”. Collection de Vive voix. CNRS Éditions and “Si Einstein avait su (Had Einstein known)”. Éditions Odile Jacob, to be released in early 2025.