Nobel Laureate to give lecture at CityU

World-renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate Professor Claude Cohen-Tannoudji will deliver a public lecture on “Measuring time: atomic clocks and ultracold atoms” at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) tomorrow (27 February).

The public lecture is part of the France – Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture Series co-organized by the French Academy of Sciences, Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and CityU. Professor Cohen-Tannoudji, Chair Professor-at-Large at CityU, will discuss recent progress in the realization of caesium atomic clocks using laser-cooled atoms. These clocks are extremely precise with an error of less than one second in 3 x 10⁸ years. He will review ideas for both putting these ultra precise atomic clocks in a microgravity environment and their applications.

Professor Cohen-Tannoudji has been Professor of Atomic and Molecular Physics at the Collège of France in Paris since 1973. His research into radiative forces on atoms in laser light fields, laser cooling and trapping has had a deep impact on many aspects of physics. He was awarded the physics Nobel Prize in 1997 for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms using laser light.

He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes, including the Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in 1964, the Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1991, and the Harvey Prize in Science and Technology from Technion Isra?l Institute of Technology in 1996. He is a Member of the French Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of many academies, including the US National Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The lecture on 27 February is open to the public. For enquiries, please call Annie Yeung at 2788 8069 or Corrie Pang at 2788 7413.

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