Physics Nobel for laser pioneers includes first woman in 55 years

A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining.

Background

The Nobel Prize in Physics is a yearly award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who conferred the most outstanding contributions for mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others being the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to physicist Wilhelm Röntgen in recognition of the extraordinary services he rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays (or x-rays). This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and widely regarded as the most prestigious award that a scientist can receive in physics. It is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. Through 2018, a total of 209 individuals have been awarded the prize.

Only three women (1.4% of laureates) have won the Nobel Prize in Physics: Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, and Donna Strickland in 2018.

Analysis

Canada’s Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963.

Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the United States won half of the 2018 prize for inventing “optical tweezers”, while Strickland shared the remainder with Frenchman Gerard Mourou, who also has U.S. citizenship, for work on high-intensity lasers.

“Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists,” Strickland said shortly after learning of the prize. The Nobel prizes have long been dominated by male scientists, and none more so than physics.

Strickland is the first female Nobel laureate in any field in three years. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said last year it would seek to more actively encourage nominations of women researchers to begin addressing the imbalance.

Strickland later spoke of how her predecessor, Goeppert Mayer, had been “allowed to follow her husband from job to job while he ... went up the ranks as a professor”, while she was only allowed to teach or do unpaid research.

The inventions by the three scientists awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics date back to the mid-1980s and over the years they have revolutionised laser physics. “Advanced precision instruments are opening up unexplored areas of research and a multitude of industrial and medical applications,” the academy said on awarding the nine million Swedish crown ($1 million) prize.

Ashkin’s work was based on the realisation that the pressure of a beam of light could push microscopic objects and trap them in position. A breakthrough came in 1987 when he used the new optical tweezers to grab living bacteria without harming them.

The countless applications made possible by their work, like laser eye surgery, high-power petawatt lasers, and the ability to trap and study individual viruses and bacteria, hold the promise to only grow in scope, going forward.

Mourou and Strickland’s research centred on developing the most intense laser pulses ever created by humans, paving the way for the precision instruments used today in corrective eye surgery and industrial applications.

Assessment

Our assessment is that Dr. Strickland’s Nobel Prize is a watershed moment for the greater inclusion of women in STEM fields. By becoming only the third women in history to win the Nobel prize in Physics, she will inspire countless more to take up science as a career path. We believe that her contributions to the development of “optical tweezers” has the potential to change critical healthcare procedures and reduce the need for invasive surgeries. We also feel that her work could be developed into a wider range of applications.