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On a day like today, Nobel Prize laureate Alfred Kastler was born

May 03, 1902. Alfred Kastler (3 May 1902 - 7 January 1984) was a French physicist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Collaborating with Jean Brossel, he researched quantum mechanics, the interaction between light and atoms, and spectroscopy. Kastler, working on combination of optical resonance and magnetic resonance, developed the technique of "optical pumping". Those works led to the completion of the theory of lasers and masers. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1966 "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms". He was president of the board of the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée and served as the first chairman of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Action Against Hunger. Professor Kastler spent most of his research career at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris where he started after the war with his student, Jean Brossel a small research group on spectroscopy. In 1978 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.