2018 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 2 October 2018.

The citation

Half of the prize goes to Arthur Ashkin "for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems". Half of the prize goes jointly to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland "for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses".

The laureates

Arthur Ashkin was born in 1922 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with Bell Laboratories, Holmdel. Gérard Mourou was born in 1944 in Albertville, France, and is affiliated with École Polytechnique, Palaiseau and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Donna Strickland was born in 1959 in Guelph, Canada, and is affiliated with the University of Waterloo, Waterloo.

Why it matters

Ashkin invented "optical tweezers" that use laser light to grab tiny objects such as cells, and Mourou and Strickland found a way to make extremely short, intense laser pulses, now used in eye surgery. Strickland is the third woman to receive the physics prize.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.