The Institut Langevin has been founded in 2009 on the initiative of Mathias Fink, academician of science and professor at ESPCI Paris. It was born from the merger of two laboratories at ESPCI Paris: the “Waves and Acoustics” laboratory, which Mathias Fink had directed since its creation in 1990, and the "Physical Optics" laboratory directed by Claude Boccara. The ambition behind this merger was to bring together in the same Institute researchers interested in all possible types of waves. The institute bears its name in reference to the French physicist Paul Langevin, who was director of ESPCI and who notably invented sonar.