Nobel Laureate and Optica Fellow Pierre Agostini earned his doctoral degree from Université Aix-Marseille in 1968. After the completion of his degree, he became a researcher at CEA Saclay, where he stayed, in various positions, until 2002. During these years, he held visiting positions at the University of Southern California, FOM Amsterdam, and BNL. After holding a string of other visiting positions, he settled at Ohio State University in 2005 as Professor of Physics.

He has received the Joop Los Award from FOM Netherlands, OSA’s William F. Meggers Award in 2007, and is a Humboldt Fellow. He was elected a Fellow of OSA in 2008 “for leadership in the development of innovative experiments providing major insights into the dynamics of the nonlinear response of atoms and molecules submitted to strong infrared laser pulses.”

On 3 October 2023 Agostini was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Frenec Krausz and Anne L’Huillier, for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.