Thomas Ebbesen (born 30 January 1954) is a Franco-Norwegian physical chemist and professor at the University of Strasbourg in France, known for his pioneering work in nanoscience.

Thomas Ebbesen obtained his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, and a PhD from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris in the field of photo-physical chemistry.

[3] For his pioneering and extensive contribution to the field of carbon nanotubes, he shared the 2001 Agilent Europhysics Prize with Sumio Iijima, Cees Dekker and Paul McEuen.

He found that, contrary to the then accepted theory, it was possible to transmit light extremely efficiently through subwavelength holes milled in opaque metal films under certain conditions.

His team demonstrated for the first time that material properties such as chemical reactivity could be modified by strongly coupling the molecules to the electromagnetic fluctuations of an optical cavity.