Gérard Mourou
active c. 1944, Albertville, France
French physicist, co-inventor of chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) enabling petawatt-class lasers.
Mourou studied ultrafast lasers at Rochester then Michigan. In 1985 he and his student Donna Strickland borrowed a radar idea: stretch the pulse before amplifying to avoid destroying the medium, then recompress — yielding intensities thousands of times higher. He initiated the European ELI facility for extreme-intensity lasers.
Nobel-winning work
CPA (Mourou–Strickland, 1985) solved the high-intensity laser problem: directly amplified pulses destroy material at low energy. Stretching the pulse in time lowers peak intensity so high energy can be amplified, then compressing back to femtoseconds yields petawatt intensity — the technology behind laser-plasma physics, tabletop accelerators and 'extreme-intensity' science.
Workplaces: University of Michigan, École Polytechnique
France