Les Houches School of Physics

Les Houches School of Physics (École de physique des Houches) is an international physics center dedicated to seasonal schools and workshops. It is located in Les Houches, France. The school was founded in 1951 by French scientist Cécile DeWitt-Morette.

Between its participants there have been famous Nobel laureates in Physics like Enrico Fermi, Wolfgang Pauli, Murray Gell-Mann and John Bardeen amongst others. According to former director of the school, Jean Zinn-Justin, the school is the "mother of all modern schools of physics”.

Since 2017, it is a Joint Research Service (Unité mixte de service, UMS) of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Grenoble Alpes University. In 2020, it was recognized as a EPS Historic Site by the European Physical Society (EPS).

History
The school was founded by Cécile DeWitt-Morette in 1951. She was 29 years old at the time, had married physicist Bryce DeWitt a week before, and was still a postdoctoral researcher in the United States. The school was created as an after World War II effort to improve the level of modern physics in Europe, that was lagging behind the United States. She was inspired by her experience in the Girl Scouts and 1949 Richard Feynman's Ann Arbor annual Summer Symposium, at the University of Michigan, which DeWitt-Morette attended.

She quickly gathered the institutional and financial support of Pierre Victor Auger (then director of the Natural Sciences Department at UNESCO), the CNRS, Albert Châtelet (dean of faculty of physics of the University of Paris) and Pierre Donzelot in charge of the French Ministry of Education. With a reduced budget, she settled to open the school in a rusty farm surrounded by chalets, a few kilometers from the village of Les Houches.

The school was publicized by her French colleagues: Yves Rocard at the École normale supérieure, Louis Leprince-Ringuet at École polytechnique, Louis de Broglie and Alexandre Proca at the Institut Henri Poincaré, and Francis Perrin at the Collège de France and CEA who hired a secretary to handle the paperwork. Louis Néel acquired the patronage of the Grenoble faculty of science in order for the school to be legally attached to the University of Grenoble. DeWitt-Morette also obtained international support from J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Julian Schwinger and Victor Weisskopf.

The first session in 1951 was attended by young French professors like Pierre Grivet, Alfred Kastler and Théo Kahan, as well as by famous physicists from abroad including Walter Heitler, Léon van Hove, Emilio Segrè, Walter Kohn and Wolfgang Pauli. The first lessons were given by Van Hove on quantum mechanics.

Up until the 1960s, the students at the school were cut off from the outside world with the bare minimum in amenities. Nobel laureate Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, a student in 1955, recalled

"It was extremely spartan ... We were lodged in small wooden chalets, barely furnished. The classroom was an old chalet slightly below. We sat on canvas chairs, the chalkboard was primitive, discussions happened outside, on the pastures. It was rough, but at the same time very charming, very bonne franquette, an extremely pleasant atmosphere."

Yves Rocard and Maurice Lévy, inspired by the school, founded a summer school in Cargèse, Corsica, which they called the '‘Les Houches on the beach". Subsequently, more scientific summer school opened all over Europe following the same model, partly with the support of Advanced Study Institutes program of NATO.

In its early years, it caused some controversy in politics, with the French Communist Party accusing the school of US espionage and interference. A counter-school project against the allegedly Americanized Les Houches school was considered but it was short-lived.

In 1977, a physics centre was created specialised for shorter conferences, all year round. In 1988, a pre-doctoral school was opened for young researchers entering into their PhD theses.

Attendees
This table records attendees who later went on to receive either the Nobel Prize in Physics or the Fields Medal.

Prize
The Cecile DeWitt-Morette, Ecole de Physique des Houches Prize is awarded annually since 2019. It is awarded to scientists, less than 55 year old, from any nationality, who has made a remarkable contribution to physics and have attended the school as a lecturer or student. The jury is composed of members of the French Academy of Sciences. Since 2023, it is called the Cécile DeWitt-Morette / Ecole de Physique des Houches / Fundation CFM for Research prize.

The laureates are: