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Three scientists on Tuesday received the Nobel Prize in Physics, including the first woman to receive this prestigious award in 55 years, for inventing the optical lasers that paved the way for advanced precision instruments used in corrective eye surgery.
Arthur Ashkin of the United States won half of the nine million Swedish kronor (about $ 1.01 million), while France's Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland of Canada split the other half.
Strickland is only the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics since her first award in 1901, while Ashkin, 96, is the oldest to have won a Nobel Prize, in front of her. American Leonid Hurwicz who was 90 years old when he won the 2007 prize for the economy.
Ashkin was honored for his invention of "optical tweezers" that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers.
Through this he was able to use the light radiation pressure to move tiny objects, "an old sci-fi dream," said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The Academy pointed out that a major breakthrough had occurred in 1987 when Ashkin had used tweezers to capture living bacteria without hurting them.
According to Ian Musgrave, of the British laser power station, the optical tweezers allow the use of lasers to handle very small objects, such as glass beads or oil droplets, in order to position them accurately or to control the surrounding environment.
For example, the tweezers can be used to "trap droplets from inhalers for asthma 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.
"The most intense laser pulses ever"
At the same time, Mourou, 74, and Strickland, 59, were rewarded for helping to develop a method of generating ultra-short optical pulses, "the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever. created by the man, "said the jury.
Their technique is now used, among other things, in corrective eye surgery.
Mourou was recently affiliated with the École polytechnique française, while Strickland, who was his student at the University of Rochester in New York, is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
He was getting ready for his daily run just before noon on Tuesday when he received the call from the Academy, Mourou told the media.
"You do not expect that.
You can imagine, but when it really happens, it's different, "he said, adding that his day had been" crazy, "said Mourou.
Laser research has been rewarded by Nobels on several occasions, including the 1964 Physics Prize and the 1999 Chemistry Prize.
Women are "outside"
At the same time, speaking on the phone at the Academy, Strickland, moved, said she was delighted to receive the Nobel Prize, the least accessible for women.
"We have to celebrate women physicists because they are out there … I am honored to be one of those women."
Before that, only Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert Mayer won the physics prize in 1903 and 1963 respectively.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has already deplored the small number of women winners in the scientific fields in general.
He emphasized that this was not due to a bias of male chauvinism in the selection committees, but rather to the fact that the doors of the laboratories had been closed for so long to women.
"This is a small percentage, so we are taking steps to encourage more applications because we do not want to miss anyone," Goran Hansson told the Academy on Tuesday.
On Monday, two immunologists, James Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine for their research on how the body's natural defenses can fight cancer.
The winners of the chemistry prize will be announced Wednesday, followed by the peace prize on Friday. The economic price will close the Nobel Prize season on Monday, October 8th.
For the first time since 1949, the Swedish Academy has postponed until next year the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2018, in the midst of a #MeToo scandal and a bitter internal conflict that prevented him from working properly.
© Agence France-Presse
This article has been modified to reflect the updated information.
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