Prof. Gerard Mourou, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, is to be awarded an honorary doctorate by Wrocław University of Science and Technology, following the university Senate’s decision made on Thursday. The presentation of the title will take place on November 15, on the day of the Celebration of Wrocław University of Science and Technology. 

– The conferment of this highest honorary dignity of our University is proposed in recognition of Professor Gerard Mourou’s enormous achievements for world science, in particular for the development of the method for amplifying ultra-short optical laser pulses of extreme power, the visionary initiative of the European scientific investment ELI (Extreme Light Infrastructure), and his many years of cooperation with the Polish scientific community – reads the resolution of Wrocław Tech’s Senate.  

Gérard Mourou was born in Albertville, France. He studied physics at the University of Grenoble and then at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris, where he earned his PhD in 1973. He moved to the USA and became a professor at the University of Rochester. In 1985, Prof. Gérard Mourou and his PhD student Donna Strickland succeeded in creating ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses without destroying the amplifying material. They introduced so called the Chirped Pulses Amplification (CPA) technique. First they stretched the laser pulses in time to reduce their peak power, then amplified them, and finally compressed them. It allows for amplifying an ultrashort laser pulse to very high optical power (Petawatts). For this research Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2018. The CPA technique has many uses, including corrective eye surgeries on more than 5 million patients.  

He is a professor at the École polytechnique and Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Prof. Mourou is also the initiator of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project in Eastern Europe. He has been awarded by many prestigious awards.