Kyiv Polytechnic representatives attend meeting with Nobel laureates
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared 2025 as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology on 7 June 2024, under the leadership of UNESCO. To mark this initiative, the meeting with Nobel laureates took place at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in early March 2025. Among the invitees were students and teachers of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and the Institute of Physics and Technology, along with representatives from the administration of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
The guests of honour – Nobel Prize winners in physics Serge Haroche and Ferenc Krausz – shared their vision of the significant milestones in the historical evolution of physics, the results and prospects of their research, and their scientific and personal experiences.
The audience was captivated by their excellent presentations, which illustrated numerous analogies, examples of application, and explanations of the gist of problems. ‘Usefulness of Junk Science: Example of Quantum Physics’ – a brilliant lecture by Prof Serge Haroche inspired many of those in attendance to serve science with determination and uncompromising commitment. The Nobel prize winner showed how the flurry of publications on quantum mechanics over the past 100 years has been followed by a series of turning-point scientific discoveries and technical breakthroughs that have radically changed the previous smooth progress of science and technology. The modern fundamental understanding of the physical world is based on quantum principles, and this revolution in the world outlook on physics is not yet over.
The energy and enthusiasm with which Prof. Ferenc Krausz elegantly and convincingly demonstrated the features of a unique scientific approach to the urgent problem of creating extremely short pulses of light in his presentation left no one untouched. He once again proved the postulate of the ‘usefulness of fundamental scientific research’ by showing an example of the practical application of attosecond pulses for blood composition analysis in the so-called electric-field fingerprint method for early diagnosis of lung cancer and other serious diseases.
The outstanding presentations concluded with candid communication. A torrent of questions, particularly from students, kept the guests engaged long after the meeting was over. From questions about how to choose a promising research topic and win a Nobel Prize, how not to be disappointed by endless failures, to questions about ‘how it works’, Serge Haroche and Ferenc Krausz answered in detail and with maximum candour, which excited even more admiration of the audience.
In conclusion, Serge Haroche and Ferenc Krausz presented the Nobel laureates’ joint appeal for the transfer of Russian frozen assets for Ukraine’s recovery and compensation.
The Nobel Prize winners expressed their all-round support and solidarity with Ukrainian scientists, students, teachers and the nation as a whole, who are fighting for their freedom and independence against the Russian aggressor.
French physicist Serge Haroche (the Nobel Prize in Physics 2012 “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems”), received the prize for obtaining important results in the study of the fundamental properties of the interaction of radiation with matter, which are necessary, in particular, when working with spin states of quantum systems, which are the basis for the operation of quantum computers. Hungarian physicist Ferenc Krausz (the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter) laid down a new branch of physics – attophysics, which studies the electron dynamics in matter using the ultrafast attosecond (one quintillionth of a second, or 10-18 of a second) pulses of light.
