Nobel physics prize goes to laser scientists for tools made of light
The work paves the way for new tools, including eye surgery lasers, and was won by an American, a French and a Canadian scientist
Stockholm/London — A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining. They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years. Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the US won half the prize for inventing “optical tweezers” while Frenchman Gérard Mourou, who also has US citizenship, and Canada’s Donna Strickland shared the other half for work on high-intensity lasers. Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, Canada, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel prize for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. “Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists because we are out there and hopefully, in time, it will start to move forward at a faster rate,” she told a news conference by phone, shortly after learning of the prize. The Nobel prizes have long been dom...
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