Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, the French Jewish physicist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, passed away in Paris on Thursday. He was 93.

His family announced his death to the AFP news agency on Friday. The Kastler Brossel Laboratory at the Ecole normale superieure in Paris, where he spent his entire career, confirmed the news and paid tribute to his exceptional contributions to atomic physics.

Cohen-Tannoudji was born on April 1, 1933, in Constantine, Algeria, to a Sephardic Jewish family whose roots traced back to Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition. “Our name, Cohen-Tannoudji, means simply the Cohen family from Tangiers,” he once said.

After moving to Paris at age 20, he studied at the Ecole normale superieure and went on to become a professor at the College de France, where he taught for three decades. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1981.

In 1997, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with American scientists Steven Chu and William D. Phillips for developing methods to cool and trap atoms using laser light. Their research enabled dramatic progress in the field of cold atoms, including atomic clocks precise enough to power modern navigation and telecommunications systems.

He was the first Nobel physics laureate born in an Arab country.

Beyond his research, Cohen-Tannoudji was a gifted teacher who trained generations of physicists, including future French Nobel laureates Serge Haroche and Alain Aspect. He also worked to bring Israeli and Palestinian scientists together, believing science could help bridge conflicts.

He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and their children.