The Nobel Prize for Physics was won by American Arthur Ashkin, Frenchman Gerard Mourou, and Canadian Donna Strickland for “Breakthroughs in Laser Physics”. The Stockholm Karolinian Institute announced laureates at the beginning of October.
“This year is the price for tools of light,” said the academy. Three physicists’ discoveries helped to better understand the big bang and photon knowledge.
American Ashking invented so-called optical tweezers that use a high-pressure beam to manipulate microscopic objects and micro-organisms.
Canadian Strickland and French Moura have developed a method of generating high-intensity and extremely short light pulses.
Sixty-five-year-old Ashkin became the oldest Nobel Prize laureate until now he was a 90-year-old economist, Leonid Hurwicz. Strickland is only the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics. When she found out, she said, “Really? I thought there was more. I’m very proud. We need to appreciate female physicists. “
Last year, the American physicists Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish received the award to confirm the existence of gravitational waves.
Above all, the laureates will also get a sum of nine million crowns ($ 1 million).
The Nobel Prize for Medicine gained American James Allison and Japanese Tasuka Hondo for research on how the body’s immune system helps fight cancer.
