Alfred Kastler

He married Elise Cosset, an ex-student of ‘École Normale Supérieure’, in December 1924. By profession she was a history teacher in secondary schools.

They were blessed with three children, Daniel (born in 1926), who became a Professor of Physics at the Faculty of Science in Marseilles; Mireille (born in 1928), who is by profession an ophthalmologist working in Paris; and Claude-Yves (born in 1936), who is a Russian language teacher at the Arts Faculty in Grenoble.

Kastler passed away on January 7, 1984, at the age of 81 years in Bandol, France.

He was born on May 3, 1902, in Guebwiller in Alsace (at that time under the German Empire, presently in France) to Fréderique Michel Kastler and his wife Anne Catherine Kastler.

He did initial studies at his native place and then attended the Oberrealschule of Colmar, Alsace, that became the ‘Lycee Bartholdi’ in 1918 following Alsace’s reversion to France after the ‘First World War’.

His interest in science was infused by his science and mathematics teachers from an early age. After reading the book on atomic structure and spectral lines by Arnold Sommerfeld, he got introduced to the principle of conservation of momentum that is used in exchanging energy between radiation and atoms, a foundation that guided him all through his research career.

After completing high school education in 1921 he joined ‘École Normale Supérieure’ in Paris from where he completed BS in Physics in 1926.

From 1926 to 1931 he served the Lycée of Mulhouse as a teacher of physics.

He then delved into an academic career in higher education and joined the ‘Bordeaux Faculty of Science’ as an assistant of Professor Pierre Daure. He served there from 1931 to 1936.

Thereafter completing his teaching duties he would utilise his free time into conducting research work. He was introduced to experimental spectroscopy by Professor Daure. Kastler worked in the area of optical spectroscopy for years, especially on Raman Spectroscopy and atomic fluorescence.

From 1936 to 1938 he remained a physics lecturer at the ‘Blaise Pascal University’ in Clermont-Ferrand. In 1937 he turned his focus to the luminescence of sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere. He succeeded in establishing that sodium vapour can absorb the D line of the twilight sky. He along with his colleague Jean Bricard showed that the D line is polarized when the emission method is one of optical resonance generated by solar radiation.

In 1938 he joined the ‘University of Bordeaux’, where he was inducted as a university professor and served the position till 1941.

He received the ‘Nobel Prize in Physics’ in 1966.