Nobel physics prize winners include first female laureate for 55 years – as it happened | Science

Thanks for joining us for the live coverage of the 2018 Nobel prize for physics. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to find out who has scooped the prize for chemistry.

The last thoughts on today’s award are from Dr Amelle Zaïr from King’s College London, who is a lecturer in advanced photonics and Dr Seirian Sumner, a behavioural ecologist and co-founder of Soapbox Science, an outreach platform to promote women in science.

“I am extremely delighted that the Nobel prize in physics 2018 recognised the invention of optical tweezers and the invention of chirp pulse amplification technique to produce ultra-short and intense laser pulses,” says Zaïr.

“Nowadays CPA femtosecond lasers are reaching impressive amount of applications. This invention has paved [the way for] state of art laser technology and motivated fundamental discovery for the near future. It has enabled eye surgery, micromatching, ultrafast optics and sensors and transforming our way of seeing nature towards revealing fundamental concepts when matter is subject to such strong and ultrashort electromagnetic fields. I am particular proud to be part of this community of scientists and that [the] UK has invest into this research.”

Sumner says the fact that Strickland’s Wikipedia page has only appeared today is telling.

“It took a Nobel prize for Donna Strickland to be noticed enough to have a (short) Wikipedia page written about her. Another example of how womens’ contributions to science go unnoticed and uncelebrated,” she says. “It takes the science equivalent of an Oscar for a woman in Stem [science, technology engineering and mathematics] to get noticed!”

And that’s a wrap!

According to an interview from a few years ago, Ashkin felt a bit miffed that he had previously missed out on the Nobel prize when it was awarded in 1997 to a trio of scientists including Steven Chu, one of Ashkin’s colleagues, “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”

Perhaps today’s news is some consolation…

Here’s a video from a few years ago with Gérard Mourou talking about his work. Apparently he came up with a key idea when he was skiing. “You know when you are skiing you are spending a lot of time on the chair lift, you have no phone, nothing, just you and mother nature…”

Al-Khalili says the subject matter of this year’s prize, is “tremendously exciting”.

“Lasers are being increasingly used as instruments in scientific research, particularly in probing the quantum world,” he says. “Lasers can be used like tweezers to manipulate and move atoms around, they can pump atoms and molecules with tiny rapid pulses of energy to probe their behaviour, and they can even help us understand some of the secrets of the quantum world that play a role side living cells, in the new field of quantum biology, something I am very interested in.”

Comment in from physicist and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili. “The most thrilling thing for me is to see Donna Strickland share this year’s prize. It is quite shocking to know that she is only the third woman to win a Physics Nobel, ever! She is also the first female winner in 55 years, particularly when we consider great physicists who missed out, such as Lise Meitner and Jocelyn Bell Burnell,” he says. “It is also quite delicious that this comes just a few days after certain controversial and misogynistic comments made at a conference at Cern about women in physics.”

The Wikipedia entry for Donna Strickland has gone from being non-existent this morning, to having multiple sections.

More on how female scientists are missing from Wikipedia in this piece.

More reaction on Twitter…

There is another new record here: at 96 years old, Arthur Ashkin is the oldest person to win a Nobel prize.

Lots of reaction on Twitter to the news that Donna Strickland shares the Nobel prize for physics – the third woman to win in the history of the prize.

“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,” Strickland said on a phone call to the press conference.

Others have said that Prof Strickland should be allowed to enjoy the prize, rather than being cast as a spokesperson for women in science:

Advice for PhD students hoping to wend their way towards a prize from one of the committee members: “Choose the topic first, then look for people who are doing this, then select the best [group].”

My colleagues Hannah Devlin and Ian Sample have put together a first take on this year’s award – check it out here.

Optical tweezers sound a bit sci-fi, but they allow scientists to use radiation pressure to hold and move very tiny objects. This means scientists can hold even living cells in place, allowing them to probe their inner workings.

That’s a wrap on the press conference! Here’s a useful graphic on Strickland and Mourou’s work from the Nobel prize team:

Apparently Ashkin is so busy with his latest scientific paper, he might not be able to give interviews about winning the Nobel prize…

Some reaction coming in from Andrea Taroni, editor of Nature Physics: “Optical tweezers are a huge deal in many domains beyond physics for the manipulation of nonoscale and biological objects, whereas high-intensity, ultrashort laser pulses are used extensively across physics and chemistry,” he said. “And there’s the small fact that Donna Strickland is the first woman to win the prize in 55 years – woop!”

Strickland again: which field does she expect the technology to be useful in? “It is used in laser machining,” she says, adding that very large lasers are being built around the world for chemistry, physics, medicine and engineering.

Her thoughts on receiving “the call” this morning: “First of all you have to think it is crazy,” she says.