Canada’s Donna Strickland collects her Nobel Prize

whole.”

The crowd on campus ate Swedish berries, chocolate gold coins and cookies with Strickland’s likeness on them as they took in the ceremony.

Strickland’s win ended a 55year-long drought for female physicists at the Nobels. She joins the ranks of Marie Curie, the first woman to claim the honour in 1903, and 1963 winner Maria Goeppert-Mayer.

It also marked the first time a Canadian female physicist has won the award.

Meghan Koo, a medical physics student at the University of Waterloo, said watching Strickland receive her Nobel prize made her proud to be a female physics student.

“Witnessing one of our professors receive her @NobelPrize as the first Canadian woman in physics to do so is incredibly inspiring at the just the beginning of my career in physics,” Koo wrote on Twitter.

Maryam Nasirpour, who identified herself as a graduate of the University of Waterloo, said Strickland was a motivating figure.

“I couldn’t be more proud to be a #Canadian and #UWaterloo alumni. Thank you for inspiring girls like me,” she tweeted.

Strickland has said her personal win marks a sign of progress for her male-dominated industry.

“It’s true that a woman hasn’t been given the Nobel Prize since then, but I think things are better for women than they have been,’’ Strickland told

shortly after her win was announced in October. “We should never lose the fact that we are moving forward. We are always marching forward.”