Donna scores for women

– Canada’s Donna Strickland, the first female Nobel Prize winner in physics since 1963, said on Tuesday women have “come a long way” since the previous laureate, Maria Goeppert Mayer.

“When I get on my soapbox if I’m teaching them, I talk about Mary. I did cite her in my own thesis,” she told a briefing from the University of Waterloo, where she teaches.

“I will also admit, sorry, I actually called her he in my thesis. Except, one of the people reading the thesis said ‘shame on you, Donna’ and changed it to she. And I did not know that she was that she,” Strickland said.

In 1939, Mayer had “predicted that an atom could absorb two photons,” says Strickland.

“It was a woman who thought of it – and changed the way we do the science.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that “with her colleague Dr Gerard Mourou of France, Dr Strickland was awarded one half of the 2018 Nobel Prize for the development of a new technique to create short, intense laser pulses.

“Their innovative work can be found in applications including corrective eye surgery and is expected to have a significant impact on cancer therapy and other physics research in the future.”