Caterina Riconda is an Italian plasma physicist who works in France as a professor at Sorbonne University and as a researcher in the Laboratory for the Use of Intense Lasers. Riconda's research involves the theoretical, computational, and experimental study of laser-plasma interactions. [1]
Riconda earned a laurea in physics (at the time, the Italian equivalent of a master's degree) from the University of Turin in 1991. She completed a Ph.D. in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997. [2] Her dissertation, Contained modes in inhomogeneous plasmas and their interaction with high energy particles, was supervised by Bruno Coppi. [3]
She has worked in England at the Joint European Torus, and in France at the École polytechnique and CEA Paris-Saclay. [1] She became a junior professor at the University of Bordeaux from 2003 to 2007. She moved to Pierre and Marie Curie University in 2007, and became a full professor there in 2016. [2] Pierre and Marie Curie University became part of Sorbonne University in 2018, [4] and she continues there as a professor. [1] [2]
Riconda was named as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2023, "for her fundamental contributions to plasma physics laser, plasma optics and collisionless shock, for training and inspiring students, particularly women, and for providing service to the international plasma physics community". [5]
Marguerite Catherine Perey was a French physicist and a student of Marie Curie. In 1939, Perey discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium. In 1962, she was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor Curie. Perey died of cancer in 1975.
Charles J. Joachain is a Belgian physicist.
This article discusses women who have made an important contribution to the field of physics.
LULI : Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses (LULI) is a scientific research laboratory specialised in the study of plasmas generated by laser-matter interaction at high intensities and their applications. The main missions of LULI include: (i) Research in Plasma Physics, (ii) Development and operation of high-power high-energy lasers and experimental facilities, (iii) student formation in Plasma Physics, Optics and Laser Physics.
Heinrich Hora is a German-Australian theoretical physicist who made contributions to solid state physics, optical properties of plasma with relativistic and quantum effects and nonlinear dynamics with applications of lasers for producing nuclear fusion energy. He lives in Sydney where he is an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and a former vice-president of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
Françoise Brochard-Wyart is a French theoretical physicist of soft matter. Currently, she is a emeritus professor of physical chemistry of Sorbonne University at the Curie Institute in Paris.
Lowell S. Brown was an American theoretical physicist who was a Staff Scientist and Laboratory Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Professor Emeritus of physics at University of Washington. He was a student of Julian Schwinger at Harvard University and a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Brown authored a book on Quantum Field Theory that has received over 5,000 citations, and authored or co-authored over 150 articles that have accumulated over 11,000 citations. Brown died on April 5, 2023, at the age of 89.
Magda Galula Ericson (born 1929) is a French-Algerian physicist of Tunisian origin. Her experimental pioneering PhD work changed the understanding of critical phenomena near the Curie point and later in her career she has become known for her theoretical development of the Ericson-Ericson Lorentz-Lorenz correction.
Miklos Porkolab (born March 24, 1939) is a Hungarian-American physicist specializing in plasma physics.
Thomas Marbory Antonsen Jr. is an American physicist, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland.
Uwe Paul Erich Thumm is a German-American physicist with research interests in atomic, molecular, and optical physics and nanoscience. A distinguished physics professor at Kansas State University and the J. R. Macdonald Laboratory in Manhattan, Kansas his research team investigates the ultrafast dynamics of electrons and molecular fragments in laser-matter and particle-matter interactions, highly-charged-ion physics, electron–atom collisions, and plasmonic nanostructures. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and recipient of several awards, including the Senior Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Jean-Bernard Zuber is a French theoretical physicist.
Félicie Albert is a French and American physicist working on laser plasma accelerators. She is the deputy director for the Center for High Energy Density Science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and staff scientist at the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science Directorate and the Joint High Energy Density Sciences organization.
Guy Laval is a French physicist, professor at the École polytechnique and member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Phillip A. Sprangle is an American physicist who specializes in the applications of plasma physics. He is known for his work involving the propagation of high-intensity laser beams in the atmosphere, the interaction of ultra-short laser pulses from high-power lasers with matter, nonlinear optics and nonlinear plasma physics, free electron lasers, and lasers in particle acceleration.
Warren Bicknell Mori is an American computational plasma physicist and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was awarded the 2020 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for his contributions to the theory and computer simulations of non-linear processes in plasma-based acceleration using kinetic theory, as well as for his research in relativistically intense lasers and beam-plasma interactions.
Leticia Fernanda Cugliandolo is an Argentine condensed matter physicist known for her research on non-equilibrium thermodynamics, spin glass, and glassy systems. She works in France as a professor of physics at the Sorbonne University.
Ambrogio Fasoli is a researcher and professor working in the field of fusion and plasma physics. Since January 2025, he is Vice President for Academic Affairs at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He was Associate Vice President for Research at EPFL since 2021.
Vladimir Kocharovsky is a Russian physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Head of the Astrophysics and Space Plasma Physics Department at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a professor at N.I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod.
Denise Hinkel is a plasma physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.