The winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Prize 2018

The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three physicists for their work on lasers. One half of the award goes to Arthur Ashkin, who invented optical tweezers – a way to manipulate tiny objects using focused beams of light – and the other half is shared between Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for their method of generating high-intensity ultra short optical pulses, which can be used to cut or drill very precise holes in material, including living tissue.

This is the first time in 55 years that a woman has won the Nobel Prize in physics, bringing the total number of female recipients of the prize to three.

Ashkin invented optical tweezers in 1986. Optical tweezers can grab tiny objects such as atoms, viruses, bacteria and other living cells, holding them with weak forces arising from their interaction with the light. Ashkin first found that he could use a laser to nudge particles around, like pushing ping pong balls with a hairdryer. But his tweezers soon became precise enough to grip living bacteria without harming them.


Physicists and biologists have used optical tweezers to probe and measure forces between particles and the stretchiness of DNA. They have also been used to clear blockages from blood vessels.

Laser eye surgery

Mourou and Strickland’s breakthrough came in 1985, when Strickland was studying for her PhD with Mourou. By stretching a short laser, then amplifying and compressing it again to pack more light into a smaller space – a technique known as chirped pulse amplification – they were able to create extremely short and intense laser pulses that can cut a wide range of material.

Their laser technology is used in millions of corrective eye surgeries every year. “It machines things like glass just like it machines the eye,” said Strickland in the Nobel press conference.

Responding to a question about the low percentage of female recipients of the prize, the committee said that they were taking measures to encourage more nominations for women.

“The percentage reflects the number of women in science if you go back 20 or 30 years,” said Olga Botner, a particle physicist at Uppsala University in Sweden, who chaired this year’s Nobel committee for physics. “The number has been increasing.”

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