Canadian physicist Donna Strickland is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics in 55 years, and the last one in 1963 was referred to by a local newspaper as a “San Diego mother” in its coverage.

The first was awarded to a woman in 1903 when Marie Curie won for her work on radioactivity. The second female winner was Maria Goeppert-Mayer, a La Jolla resident and University of California at San Diego professor who developed the nuclear shell model of atomic nuclei. At a press conference back in 1963 after she won the prize, she said the model came from a discovery that the particles of atoms behave “very much like partners in a waltz.”

Atlas Obscura, an online database of “the world’s most wondrous places and foods” was the first to point out on Tuesday — the same day that Strickland was named a winner — that Goeppert-Mayer was referred to in news coverage as a “San Diego Mother.”

Considering this is The San Diego Union-Tribune, we had to go track this down for ourselves. The Union and The Tribune used to be two separate papers in San Diego, and The San Diego Tribune did run a headline on Nov. 5, 1963, saying “S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Physics Prize.”

Courtesy of The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Dr. Maria Goeppert-Mayer, 57, a research physicist at the University of California here, today was named a 1963 Nobel Prize winner in Physics,” the first sentence of the front-page article says.

It’s immediately followed by this: “The red-haired college professor, mother of two, is the first woman residing in America to win a Nobel physics prize, the second woman in history.”

This connection comes at a time when women’s contributions to physics are already in the spotlight, as a professor speaking at a conference at the Geneva, Switzerland-based nuclear research center CERN made headlines for saying physics was invented and built by men. The scientist was suspended, pending investigation into the incident.

Out of 923 total Nobel Prize laureates, only 48 of those have been women, and just three in the physics category.

Strickland, who was announced as a winner on Tuesday, is a Canadian physicist who was awarded in a group of three scientists for their “method generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.” She and her research partner Gérard Mourou paved the way toward the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind, and their discovery has contributed to millions of corrective eye surgeries that are conducted every year using sharp laser beams, according to The Nobel Prize website.

That women in physics have been a big topic of conversation in the last week and surrounding her achievement didn’t go unnoticed by Strickland.

"We need to celebrate women physicists because we're out there. I'm honored to be one of those women," Strickland said following the announcement in Stockholm.

And a conversation is also playing out on Twitter.

To read more on the Nobel Prize won by Strickland, Mourou and American co-winner Arthur Ashkin, go here.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin