The “Prix Ampère de l’Électricité de France” awarded to Alain Brillet!

Alain Brillet received the scientific award “Prix Ampère de l’Électricité de France 2016” in a stately ceremony of the French Academy of Sciences, on October 18, 2016 in Paris. Alain was awarded the Ampère de l’Électricité de France Prize in relation with the detection of gravitational waves, a breakthrough discovery jointly announced by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration in February 2016. This prestigious award acknowledges his key role in the development of large interferometers leading to the detection of gravitational waves.

An expert in the metrology of laser interferometers, Alain Brillet convinced scientists and funding agencies years ago to engage in the search for gravitational waves. The Franco-Italian project, Virgo, was born thanks to the efforts of both Alain and Prof. Adalberto Giazotto (Pisa). While his Italian colleague Adalberto developed the suspension system for decoupling the test mass mirrors from terrestrial vibrations, Alain and his team at Université Côte d’Azur, the ARTEMIS research unit of CNRS, developed innovative methods in the field of lasers and optics in order to design a detector, and extend its sensitivity to the low frequency band.

More on the prize awarded to Alain Brillet can be found at: http://www.academie-sciences.fr/en/Laureats/laureat-2016-du-prix-ampere-de-l-electricite-de-france-alain-brillet.html

This prize is annually awarded by the French Academy of Sciences to acknowledge the remarkable research work of one or more researchers in a French laboratory “in the field of basic or applied mathematical or physical sciences” ..

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