Cécile DeWitt-Morette
| Cécile DeWitt-Morette | |
|---|---|
Cécile DeWitt-Morette (left) with Bryce DeWitt (right)
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| Born |
21 December 1922 Paris, France |
| Residence | United States of America |
| Fields |
Theoretical physics Functional integration |
| Institutions |
Institute for Advanced Study University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Texas at Austin |
| Known for | École de Physique des Houches |
| Notable awards | Marcel Grossmann Award |
| Spouse | Bryce DeWitt (1951-2004; his death); 4 children |
Cécile Andrée Paule DeWitt-Morette (born 21 December 1922) is a French mathematician and physicist. She founded a summer school at Les Houches in the French Alps. For this and her publications, she was awarded the American Society of the French Legion of Honour 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, Georges Charpak, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who identify the school for assisting in their success.
Cécile Morette was born in 1922 and brought up in Normandy, where in 1943 she earned her License des Science from the University of Caen.
Despite her original intention to become a surgeon, she completed her degree in mathematics, physics, and chemistry due to limited opportunities to attend medical school in France during World War II.
Following the completion of her bachelor's degree, Morette entered the University of Paris, where she was studying when her mother, sister, and grandmother were tragically killed in the Allied bombing of Caen to support the D-Day landings. In 1944, while still working toward her doctorate at the University of Paris, Morette took a job at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, then under the direction of Frederic Joliot-Curie. She completed her Ph.D. (Sur la production des mésons dans les chocs entre nucléons) in 1947.
In 1948 she was invited to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey by Robert Oppenheimer, who had recently become director of the Institute. There she met her future husband and scientific collaborator, American physicist Bryce DeWitt; the couple married in 1951, and would have four children.
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