Professor Paul Corkum graduated from Lehigh University, USA, in 1972 with a Ph. D. in theoretical physics. In 1973 he joined the staff of the National Research Council of Canada where he built one of the world’s most famous groups working on the interaction of very short light pulses with matter. Corkum is a Full Professor of Physics, a Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa and directs the Joint NRC/University of Ottawa Attosecond Science Laboratory. He is a member of the Royal Societies of London and of Canada and also a foreign member of the US National Academy of Science, the Austrian Academy of Science, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among his many honours and recognitions, he has received the 2017 Royal Medal, for his major contributions to laser physics and the development of the field of attosecond science, as well as the National Research Council of Canada’s Schneider Medal, their highest distinction bestowed upon employees. In 2018, Corkum was awarded both the SPIE Gold Medal, and the Isaac Newton Medal and Prize from the UK Institute of Physics, and is a recipient of the 2019 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics.
