In recent years, we have come across Lannionnais Jean-Claude Simon in associations like Trégor Swing or Loisir danse Trégor. He is also a cycling instructor at Trégor bicyclette. We often ignore that the smiling Trégorrois is a pioneer in optics and laser data transmission.
Retired since 2013, he still supports, as professor emeritus, the work of young researchers at the Foton Institute in Enssat, where he taught from 2000 to 2011. In June, the physicist was again awarded the Léon Brillouin prize, named after a French physicist exiled to the United States in 1940. Jean-Claude Simon had modest success: “I was not candidate. The director of the Foton Institute asked me if I agreed to submit my application. I knew that it was a plus for the lab, particularly with regard to the CNRS with which it is associated and which grants it resources and positions, I said yes. »
The dawn of fiber optics
Jean-Claude Simon’s career in lasers began during his studies in Paris: “The laser fascinated me, so I presented my thesis in 1975 in this field. » He then arrives in Lannion to visit and join the Cnet (National Center for Telecommunications Studies) transmission and laser study laboratory, at the dawn of work on optical fiber, which conducts light and information. Cnet, attached to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, then became a laboratory of France Télécom, then Orange.
His idea: to transpose electronic circuits into optics and amplify the laser effect, in order to transmit more information more quickly. A success, according to the Foton Institute: “It obtains world firsts in amplification in semiconductor lasers. Ten years before the advent of the first fiber amplifiers, he succeeded in demonstrating that optical amplification constituted a viable solution for optical communications. » All this at a time when there is less information to transmit. Radio and television were broadcast via microwave, telephones operated via copper wires and the Internet was in its infancy.
“Great freedom and means”
“In order to amplify the signal by laser diode, I bought inexpensive components in the United States on which I made additional thin layers,” explains the physicist, before specifying: “To make a laser, we need mirrors. To amplify it, you have to remove the mirrors, this was the objective of the thin layers. It was worth a scientific publication. That’s when people started to believe in it, because you can fit an immense amount of data into a single component! »
Jean-Claude Simon praises the years spent at Cnet: “We had great freedom and resources, in particular thanks to my boss, Michel Tréheux, who believed in it. » He left France Télécoms in 1998, when the first start-ups were launched. Some of his colleagues choose to start businesses, he joins the university setting. “The director of Enssat contacted me and I prepared a project funded by the State and the region to create a laboratory which hosted the research and skills of France Telecom. »
The Léon Brillouin Prize therefore crowns years of research punctuated by numerous advances and 267 often cited scientific publications. What the physicist is careful not to specify.
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