Serge Haroche (born 11 September 1944)[1] is a French physicist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with David J. Wineland for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems", a study of the particle of light, the photon.

[6] His father, a lawyer trained in Rabat, was one of seven children born to a family of teachers, Isaac and Esther Haroche, who worked at the École de l’Alliance israélite (AIU).

Haroche worked in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) as a research scientist from 1967 to 1975 at the French UMR Kastler–Brossel Laboratory, and spent a year (1972–1973) as a visiting post-doc in Stanford University, in Arthur Leonard Schawlow's team.

On 9 October 2012 Haroche was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, together with the American physicist David Wineland, for their work regarding measurement and manipulation of individual quantum systems.

After a PhD dissertation on dressed atoms under the supervision of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (who would receive the 1997 Nobel Prize) from 1967 to 1971, he developed new methods for laser spectroscopy, based on the study of quantum beats and superradiance.