Serge Haroche was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1944. After the war, his family moved to Paris, France. In 1963, he enrolled at the Ecole Normal Superiure, where he learned from Alfred Kastler, Jean Bossel, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. After completing his bachelor’s degree, he stayed at ENS and began his thesis under Cohen-Tannoudji. After his Ph.D., he became a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, under Arthur Schawlow. After one year in California, Haroch returned to ENS in 1973, where he had his own lab from the start. He also held a research position at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). In 1975, he became a professor at Paris VI University, keeping his ENS position. Later, he took on a part-time teaching position at Ecole Polytechnique. Throughout the 1980s, he held a position at Yale University, and he split his time between Paris and the United States.

In 1994, he became chairman of the ENS physics department, which he maintained for six years. He was elected a Professor at the Collège de France in 2000. Today, he is Professor Emeritus there.

Haroche’s work has been widely recognized, most notably with one-half of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with David Wineland. He has also received the CNRS Gold Medal, and OSA’s Herbert Walther Award and Charles Hard Townes Medal.