Laser pioneers carve Nobel Physics honour

Inventions help create tools for corrective eye surgeries

Stockhom, Oct. 2: Three scientists on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for inventing optical lasers that have paved the way for advanced precision instruments used in corrective eye surgery.

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

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.

Ashkin was honoured for his invention of “optical tweezers” that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers. With this he was able to use the radiation pressure of light to move physical objects, “an old dream of science fiction”.

A major breakthrough came in 1987 when Ashkin used the tweezers to capture living bacteria without harming them, the Academy noted. Ashkin made his discovery while working at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1952 to 1991.

Meanwhile, Mourou, 74, and Strickland won for helping develop a method to generate ultrashort 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.

Mourou was affiliated with the Ecole Polytechnique of France and the University of Michigan in the US, while Strickland, his student, is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He was also involved in building the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project and what is believed to be one of the world’s most powerful lasers, the Apollon, in developments that researchers hope will one day help deal with nuclear waste, treating tumours and clearing debris in space.