Three scientists have been awarded the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for creating tools from light which have paved the way for advanced precision instruments used in industry and medicine. The trio will share the 9m Swedish kronor (£770,000) prize announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Tuesday.
Arthur Ashkin of the United States won one half of the prize, while Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada shared the other half. Ashkin, of Bell Laboratories in New Jersey won for his development of “optical tweezers”. The technology has allowed tiny organisms to be handled with beams of light, an effect the awarding committee illustrated by levitating a ping pong ball with a hairdryer.
Mourou and Strickland receive the award “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”
Strickland, a laser physicist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, becomes the first woman to win the physics Nobel since Maria Goeppert Mayer was honoured in 1963 for her work on the nuclear shell structure. She is also only the third woman in history to win the physics prize. Strickland was quoted by The Guardian saying, “We need to celebrate women physicists because we’re out there, and hopefully in time it’ll start to move forward at a faster rate. I’m honoured to be one of those women.”
On Monday, two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research that has revolutionised the treatment of cancer.
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