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Donna Strickland is only the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. She is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo.
She is honoured "for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses" alongside Gérard Mourou for the one half of the prize. The other half was awarded to Arthur Ashkin - collectively the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 was awarded "for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics".
“We need to celebrate women physicists because they’re out there… I’m honoured to be one of those women," says Donna Strickland.
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018
She becomes the third woman to receive the #NobelPrize in Physics, joining Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963) and Marie Curie (1903). Congratulations! pic.twitter.com/m2XLJHTW0V
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in a press statement said Donna and Gérard “paved the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind”.
Donna was quoted on News24 saying: "We need to celebrate women physicists because they're out there... I'm honoured to be one of those women."
This honour makes Donna the first woman in 55 years to be honoured in this category. Before her...
Maria Goeppert Mayer was honoured in 1963
Maria was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Hans Jensen "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure". Her affiliation at the time of the award was with the University of California.
This award was for work done in 1949 and the motivation for the prize was that Maria and Hans “developed a model in which nucleons were distributed in shells with different energy levels. The model reflected observations of directions in which nucleons rotated around their own axes and around the centre of the nucleus”.
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Marie Curie was honoured in 1903
After being honoured with the Nobel Prize in 1903, Marie went on to be the first person ever to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. Her second prize was awarded in 1911.
The prize motivation awarded to Marie – and her husband – in 1903 was "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".
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