French physicist Alain Aspect was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 along with John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger on Tuesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

“The 2022 physics laureates’ development of experimental tools has laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology. Being able to manipulate and manage quantum states and all their layers of properties gives us access to tools with unexpected potential,” the Nobel Prize committee said announcing the winners.

Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel committee said: “Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field. It has broad and potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing and sensing technology.”

“Its origin can be traced to that of quantum mechanics,” she added. “Its predictions have opened doors to another world, and it has also shaken the very foundations of how we interpret measurements.”

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Last year, the prize was awarded to three scientists – Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi.

The 75-year-old was born in Agen, France on June 15 in 1947. He  graduated from the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan. He received his master’s degree from Université d’Orsay. He later did his national service, teaching for three years in Cameroon.

Aspect received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2008.

In 2013, he was awarded both the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal and the UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal. He was also awarded the Balzan Prize for Quantum Information Processing and Communication the same year.

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Asteroid 33163 Alainaspect, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1998, was named after him. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on November 8 2019 (M.P.C. 118220).

Other significant awards include the CNRS Gold Medal (2005) and Wolf Prize in Physics (2010). In 2014, he was named Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit. In 2021, he was named as an Optica Honorary Member.