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 July 1990 : quantum optics, non-linear optics and laser cooling Director : Jean Zinn-Justin Coorganisers of the school : Jean Dalibard and Jean-Michel Raimond Teachers Rainer Blatt Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (Nobel Prize 1997) Claude Fabre Serge Haroche (Nobel Prize 2012) H. Jeff Kimble Daniel Kleppner Luigi Lugiato William D. Phillips (Nobel Prize 1997) Wolfgang Schleich Yuen-Ron Shen Jook Walraven Visitors Alain Aspect Notable participants Artur Ekert, Wolfson College, Oxford University, UK Daniel Hennequin Laboratoire de Spectroscopie Hertzienne, Université de Lille-Flandres-Artois, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France Monika (Ritsch-)Marte, Institut für Theoretische Physik, University of Innsbruck, Austria Klaus Mølmer, Institute of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Denmark Olivier Pfister, Université Paris-Nord, Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, France Michael Schubert, University of Hamburg, Institut fur Experimentalphysik, Germany Andrew Steane, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, UK Kalle-Antti Suominen, University of Helsinki, Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Finland 1954 Teachers Freeman Dyson Rudolf Peierls 1951 Participants : Claude Cohen-Tannoudji References External links École de Physique des Houches web site Education in France Summer schools Physics education