Cécile DeWitt-Morette
Encyclopedia
Cécile Andrée Paule DeWitt-Morette (born December 21, 1922) is a French mathematician and physicist. She founded a summer school at Les Houches
Les Houches
Les Houches is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.-Overview:It is a ski-resort, and is located 6 kilometres from Chamonix with a ski domain which extends from an altitude of 950 metres up to 1900 metres...

 in the French Alps
French Alps
The French Alps are those portions of the Alps mountain range which stand within France, located in the Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions....

. For this and her publications, she was awarded the American Society of the French Legion of Honor 2007 Medal for Distinguished Achievement. Attendees at the summer school included over twenty students who would go on to be Nobel Prize winners, including Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.-Biography:...

, Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak was a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.-Life:Georges Charpak was born to Jewish family in the village of Dąbrowica in Poland . Charpak's family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old...

, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji is a French physicist and Nobel Laureate. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and William Daniel Phillips for research in methods of laser cooling and trapping atoms...

, who identify the school for assisting in their success.

Life

Cécile Morette was born in 1922 and brought up in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

; she originally decided to become a surgeon. She moved to mathematics after taking a sample course to develop her education. She had to deal with a tragedy when her mother, her sister, and her grandmother were killed in the Allied bombing of Caen
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....

 to support the D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...

 landings. At the time Morette was studying in Paris. She completed her Ph.D. (Sur la Production des mésons dans les chocs entre nucléons) in 1947.

In 1948 she was invited by Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first...

 to the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...

 in Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...

. Oppenheimer had just taken up the position left vacant by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

. There she met her future husband, although she felt guilty that she was transferring her allegiance from France to America.

She rationalised this by deciding to start a school in France in 1951. The school started with a course in quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

 and was intended to assist France following the Second World War. She founded the summer school at Les Houches
Les Houches
Les Houches is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.-Overview:It is a ski-resort, and is located 6 kilometres from Chamonix with a ski domain which extends from an altitude of 950 metres up to 1900 metres...

 in the French Alps
French Alps
The French Alps are those portions of the Alps mountain range which stand within France, located in the Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions....

. She tells stories of how she obtained the funding by tricking her way into a minister's office and then persuaded her male colleagues to support the idea by pretending that the idea was theirs. Morette was to lead this school for the next 22 years. The school was able to list twenty former students or lecturers at the school who went to become Nobel laureates. One winner of the Fields Medal
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...

 credited the summer school as responsible for his career in mathematics. Nobel laureates Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.-Biography:...

, Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak was a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.-Life:Georges Charpak was born to Jewish family in the village of Dąbrowica in Poland . Charpak's family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old...

, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji is a French physicist and Nobel Laureate. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and William Daniel Phillips for research in methods of laser cooling and trapping atoms...

 identified the school as helping with their success. In 1958, NATO funded a series of advanced study centres that were based on Morette's summer school.

Morette found that she did suffer some discrimination in America. She married the American physicist Bryce DeWitt
Bryce DeWitt
Bryce Seligman DeWitt was a theoretical physicist renowned for advancing gravity and field theories.-Biography:...

 and they had four children. Morette had originally adopted her husband's name, but found that her work was attributed to him. Later they were both visiting Professors at a University that downgraded Morette, claiming that they did this under a clause to prevent two family members having power. This was despite the significant contribution by Morette.

In 1953 a trustee of the unusual Gravity Research Foundation
Gravity Research Foundation
The Gravity Research Foundation, established in 1948 by businessman Roger Babson , was an organization designed to find ways to implement gravitational shielding...

, Agnew Bahnson, contacted Bryce DeWitt
Bryce DeWitt
Bryce Seligman DeWitt was a theoretical physicist renowned for advancing gravity and field theories.-Biography:...

 with a proposal to fund a gravity research institute. The proposed name was agreed as the "Institute for Field Physics" and it was established in 1956 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

 under the direction of Bryce and Morette.

In 1972 Morette and her husband led an expedition to Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...

 to confirm that light was deflected in line with the theory of general relativity
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...

. These measurements were made during the solar eclipse
Solar eclipse
As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...

 there. Comparison of the pictures with those made six months later confirmed that, in line with theory, light was indeed bent when passing by massive objects. Morette and her husband joined the faculty of the University of Texas in 1972. She began to work increasingly in physics rather than in mathematics, and she became a Professor in 1985.

Bryce DeWitt died in 2004 from cancer. In 2007 Professor Cécile DeWitt-Morette was awarded the American Society of the French Legion of Honor 2007 Medal for Distinguished Achievement in New York. She was then the Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor Emerita of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

.

Selected works

  • L’Energie Atomique, de Gigord, Paris (1946)
  • Particules Elémentaires, Hermann, Paris (1951)
  • Black holes (Cécile DeWitt-Morette, Bryce Seligman DeWitt, 1973)
  • (With Y. Choquet-Bruhat and M. Dillard) Analysis, Manifolds, and Physics, (1977)
  • I.T. for Intelligent Grandmothers, (1987)
  • (With Y. Choquet-Bruhat) Analysis, Manifolds, and Physics. Part II. (1989)
  • Quantum field theory: perspective and prospective (Cécile DeWitt-Morette, Jean Bernard Zuber)
  • (With P. Cartier) Functional Integration, Action and Symmetries (2006)
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