96-year-old, woman among 3 to share physics Nobel

NEW YORK — Scientists from the United States, Canada and France won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for revolutionizing the use of lasers in research by finding ways to make them deliver more powerful flashes of light and even act like tiny tweezers.

Their work paved the way for laser eye surgery to improve vision, and studies that can manipulate cells and their innards.

Two winners also made history for other reasons. Arthur Ashkin, the American who developed “optical tweezers,” became the oldest Nobel Prize laureate at age 96. And Donna Strickland of the University of Waterloo in Canada became only the third woman to win the physics Nobel, and the first in 55 years. Strickland Mourou Donna Strickland

Strickland and the third winner, Frenchman Gerard Mourou of the Ecole Polytechnique and the University of Michigan, developed a way to generate highintensity, ultra- short bursts of laser light. They share half of the $ 1.01 million prize, while the other half goes to Ashkin, who worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey.

Ashkin said he was pleasantly surprised when he got the 5 a. m. call from Sweden.

“I’m very old and had given up worrying about things like Nobel Prizes,” he told The Associated Press.

He said he’s working on solar energy research at his New Jersey home.

Strickland’s award was the first Nobel Prize in physics to go to a woman since 1963, when it was won by Maria GoeppertMayer; the only other woman to win for physics was Marie Curie in 1903.

“Obviously, 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,” Strickland said in a phone call with the academy after the prize announcement. Ashkin

“Obviously, 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.”