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The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded Tuesday to Arthur Ashkin (United States), Gerard Mourou (France) and Donna Strickland (Canada) for having exploited one of the most ineffable aspects of nature, the pure light , in a powerful microscopic force. Strickland, a "laser jock," describes herself as the third woman to win the Physics Prize, for her work as a graduate student in Mourou.
Ashkin will receive half the prize money, worth about a million dollars; Mourou and Strickland will share the rest.
The Nobel Committee paid tribute to scientists for their work transforming laser light into miniature tools. Ashkin invented the "optical tweezers", which use the pressure of a highly focused laser beam to manipulate microscopic objects, including living organisms such as viruses and bacteria.
Strickland and Mourou have developed a method for generating high-intensity ultrashort laser pulses, called chirped pulse amplification. The work has had a wide range of real-world applications, allowing manufacturers to drill tiny and accurate holes and enabling the invention of LASIK eye surgery.
Some physicists believe that the amplification of pulsed pulses will eventually be used to accelerate the subatomic particles, replacing giant devices such as the Large Hadron Collider by table experiments. In the physics of tomorrow, "bigger is not necessarily better," said Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, N.J.
In a press conference, Strickland expressed the hope that the amplification of the tick pulse could one day be used to cure cancer. Ashkin's optical tweezers have played a particularly important role in biological research on viruses and other microbes.
Ashkin was born in 1922 in New York. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics from Columbia in 1947. He earned a PhD in Nuclear Physics from Cornell in 1952 and joined Bell Labs, the Mecca for Innovation and Nobel Prizes, at Murray Hill, New Jersey where he worked until 1991.
Ashkin began experimenting with lasers – coherent, monochromatic lightwaves parading in unison like little soldiers – in the 1960s, shortly after their invention. He thought that the same light pressure that escaped from the tail of a comet could be used in the laboratory to push a microscopic bullet.
To his amazement, the play of forces in the laser beam actually drove the bullet to the center of the beam and trapped it there – a first step towards an optical clip.
"The optical tweezers were not an invention, they were a surprise," said David G. Grier, a physicist at New York University and former colleague of Ashkin at Bell Labs. "It was a new thought for science, this light can fire. It's revolutionary. "
In 1997, Steven Chu, who had worked with Ashkin at Bell Labs and is now at Stanford University, won the Physics Prize for his use of optical tweezers to study the properties of quantum mechanical atoms. Ashkin later said that he was disappointed that it was not included in the price.
With his own tweezers, Ashkin then studied the inner workings of cells and the molecular motors that feed microorganisms. He is still there. After Tuesday's announcement, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Ashkin, who turned 96 last month, would not be available to comment because he was busy with his next scientific article.
Mourou was born in Albertville, France, in 1944 and obtained a doctorate in physics from the University of Grenoble in 1973. He is currently a professor at the École polytechnique de France and director of the International Center for Science and zetta-exawatt technology. is dedicated to the study of high-speed, high-speed laser pulses.
Mourou spent 30 years in the United States at the University of Michigan, where he is still Professor Emeritus, and at the University of Rochester. It is at this latter school that he has attacked Strickland as a graduate student.
Strickland, born in Guelph (Canada) in 1959, is only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. She is now an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Nobel prizes have been criticized in recent years for their lack of winning women. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars as a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge in 1968, was not included in a Nobel Prize that was subsequently awarded to his advisor, the astronomer Antony Hewish.
Strickland seemed surprised when she was asked how one felt to be the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. "I thought it could have been more than that," she said. "I do not know what to say."
The Royal Academy announced last week its intention to change its nomination guidelines to ensure a greater diversity of winners in the future, but said that these measures did not affect the price of Tuesday.
"Yes, that's great," said Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard, in an email describing the Strickland Prize. "I guess they were listening."
Who won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017?
Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish have been recognized for the detection of space – time ripples, called gravitational waves, which had been predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago but which do not have the same effect. had never been seen directly. The Royal Swedish Academy has described this experience as "a discovery that has turned the world upside down".
Who else won a Nobel Prize this year?
James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo received Monday the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery that the immune system can be used to attack cancer cells.
When will the other Nobels be announced?
– The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced Wednesday in Sweden.
– The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday in Norway.
– The Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics will be announced Monday in Sweden.
– The Nobel Prize for Literature has been postponed. The institution that chooses the winner is mixed up in a scandal involving allegations of sexual misconduct, financial misconduct and repeated leaks – a crisis that has resulted in the departure of several members of the board of directors and required the intervention of the King of Sweden. Two winners could be announced next year.
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