STOCKHOLM: Three scientists on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize, including the first woman to receive the prestigious award in 55 years, for inventing optical lasers that have paved the way for advanced precision instruments used in corrective eye surgery.

Arthur Ashkin of the United States won one half of the nine-million Swedish kronor (about $1.01 million) prize, while Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada shared the other half.

ASHKIN, OLDEST WINNER: Ashkin, 96, is the oldest person to win a Nobel, beating out American Leo­nid Hurwicz who was 90 when he won the 2007 Economics Prize. The 96-year-old is still busy with fresh res­earch. “I am busy working right now, writing an important paper on solar energy,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Ashkin was honoured for his invention of “optical tweezers” that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers.

A major breakthrough came in 1987 when Ashkin used the tweezers to capture living bacteria without harming them, the Academy noted.

According to Ian Musgrave of Britain’s Central Laser Facility, optical tweezers make it possible to use lasers to manipulate very small objects, such as beads of glass or oil droplets, to position them precisely or control the environment around them.

The tweezers can for example be used to “trap droplets from asthma inhalers to improve the efficiency of delivery through the lungs,” he said.

Ashkin made his discovery while working at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1952 to 1991.

MOUROU: Mourou, 74, and Strickland won for helping develop a method to generate ultra-short optical pulses, “the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind”, the jury said. Their technique is now used in corrective eye surgery, among other things.

Mourou was most recently affiliated with France’s Ecole Polytechnique.

STRICKLAND, FIRST WOMAN SINCE 1963: Strickland, 59, is just the third woman to win a Nobel Physics Prize since it was first awarded in 1901. Speaking by phone to the Academy, a moved Strickland said she was thrilled to receive the Nobel prize that has been the least accessible for women.

Contacted by AFP, Mourou said he was getting ready for his daily swim just before noon on Tuesday when he got the call from the Academy. “You don’t expect it. You can imagine it, but when it actually happens, it’s different,” he said, adding that his day had turned out “crazy”.

“We need to celebrate women physicists because they’re out there ... I’m honoured to be one of those women.”

Before her, only Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert Mayer had won the physics prize, in 1903 and 1963 respectively.

Strickland, was co-winner Mourou’s student at the University of Rochester in New York, is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Her win comes a day after Europe’s physics research centre CERN suspended an Italian scientist, Alessandro Strumia, for telling a seminar at the organisation’s Swiss headquarters last week that physics was “invented and built by men”.

Jim Al-Khalili, professor of theoretical physics at Britain’s University of Surrey, said on Twitter it was “delicious” that Strickland had won the Nobel prize just days after Strumia’s “misogynistic” comments.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd , 2018