2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland
2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland
2018 Nobel Prize in Physics
Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland receive Nobel “for creating groundbreaking tools from beams of light”
October 02, 2018
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that three prestigious scientists, Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland are the 2018 Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physics “for creating groundbreaking tools from beams of light”. It is with great pleasure that ICFOnians celebrate this recognition of the ground breaking contributions in photonics of our highly respected colleagues and friends.
Arthur Ashkin, who at 96 is the oldest winner of any Nobel Prize, receives half of the Nobel “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems”. Donna Strickland and her former PhD advisor Gérard Mourou share the other half of this year’s Nobel “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”. Strickland is the third woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, and is currently the only living female physics laureate.
As the award announcement proclaims, “The innumerable areas of application have not yet been completely explored. However, even now these celebrated inventions allow us to rummage around in the micro-world in the best spirit of Alfred Nobel – for the greatest benefit to humankind”.
Arthur Ashkin, who at 96 is the oldest winner of any Nobel Prize, receives half of the Nobel “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems”. Donna Strickland and her former PhD advisor Gérard Mourou share the other half of this year’s Nobel “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”. Strickland is the third woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, and is currently the only living female physics laureate.
As the award announcement proclaims, “The innumerable areas of application have not yet been completely explored. However, even now these celebrated inventions allow us to rummage around in the micro-world in the best spirit of Alfred Nobel – for the greatest benefit to humankind”.