Odile Jacob Publishing to release The Science of Light, a captivating journey of scientific discovery by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Serge Haroche. The Science of Light will be available for purchase worldwide in digital formats starting on Thursday, March 24, 2022, at odilejacob.com and on all retail platforms. Serge Haroche is professor emeritus at the Collège de France, a member of the Académie des Sciences, a foreign member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, and winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering methods of manipulating and measuring individual quantum systems. He has taught at Paris VI University, the École Polytechnique, the École Normale Supérieure, Harvard University, and Yale University.

Serge Haroche

Nobel Prize in Physics

The Science of Light

From Galileo’s Telescope to Quantum Physics

Light has fascinated mankind since the dawn of time. Elucidating its properties over the centuries has been an adventure intimately linked with the birth and development of modern science; it has led, after many surprising twists, to the theories of relativity and quantum physics which have profoundly changed our view of the world at the microscopic and cosmic scales alike. Placing his own career in a rich lineage of scientific discovery, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Serge Haroche offers a literally enlightening account of what we know about light today, how we learned it, and how that knowledge has led to countless inventions that have revolutionized daily life. From Galileo and Newton to Einstein and Feynman, from early measurements of the speed of light to cutting-edge work on quantum entanglement, Haroche takes a detailed and personal look at light’s role in how we see and understand the universe.

The Science of Light is at once a colorful history of scientific inquiry and a passionate defense of “blue sky research”—investigations conducted not in pursuit of a particular goal, but out of curiosity and faith that today’s abstract discoveries may well power tomorrow’s most incredible possibilities. A uniquely captivating book about the thrill of discovery.

Contents

FOREWORD 13

CHAPTER 1: The dawn of a vocation 21

First passions: from mathematics to astronomy 23

Introduction to modern physics 35

Shut up and calculate! 47

When atoms and photons are spinning tops: optical pumping 50

To see the world as something rich and strange 65

An apprenticeship in trust and freedom 77

Promises of the laser 81

Beginnings in research 85

First trip to America and return to my first passion 90

“Blue sky” research 93

CHAPTER 2: Reflections in the Observatory square

Two instruments at the origins of the scientific revolution: the refracting telescope and the pendulum clock 97

Measuring the speed of light to survey the universe 100

The science of light becomes quantitative: Descartes and Dioptrics 106

Nature works by the shortest and simplest ways: Fermat’s principle 113

Huygens and the wave theory of light 118

Newton, light particles, and color 124

Measuring the shape of the Earth 134

A passion for precision 143

Basic science, business, power, and technology 156

CHAPTER 3: Daydreams in Faraday’s laboratory

Young v. Newton 165

Light is polarized 169

Fresnel and the triumph of the waves 175

Combining vectors and interfering waves 177

A rotating vibration: circular polarization 181

Light illuminated by mathematics 187

Back to the speed of light 193

From the salons of the Enlightenment to Faraday’s laboratory 198

Birth of the concept of field 208

The confluence of light, electricity, and magnetism 218

Some mysteries disappear but others remain 223

CHAPTER 4: The two clouds of Lord Kelvin

Michelson and the puzzle of the aether 239

Einstein comes on the scene: thought experiments 245

A relativistic change of perspective 249

Space mixes with time 261

Mass and energy combine: E = mc2 266

Einstein’s “happiest” idea comes from Galileo again 272

Gravitation and curvature of space-time 283

Relativistic predictions 291