Physics Nobel for laser pioneers includes first woman in 55 years

[phands]

This starts so early in life - pre-school age - that's it's not a surprise that there aren't many female Nobel winners in the sciences....

[FONT=&quot]A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Canada’s Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the United States won half of the 2018 prize for inventing “optical tweezers” while Strickland shares the remainder with Frenchman Gerard Mourou, who also has U.S. citizenship, for work on high-intensity lasers.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists because we are out there and hopefully in time it will start to move forward at a faster rate,” Strickland told a news conference by telephone, shortly after learning of the prize.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The Nobel prizes have long been dominated by male scientists, and none more so than physics.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Strickland is the first female Nobel laureate in any field in three years. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said last year it would seek to more actively encourage nominations of women researchers to begin addressing the imbalance.[/FONT]

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/physics-nobel-laser-pioneers-includes-first-woman-55-years/

 

[steve_bank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#Foundations

A long history of theoretical and practical innovation. Apparently it started with a paper by Einstein,

The link sounds like affirmative action. The lack of female science is one thing, awarding the Nobel to a woman to make a statement s is another.

Anyone want to argue science is not just as political as anything else?

The innovations in the prize for the group sound to me more like routine R&D in industry,

https://accounts.google.com/signin/...flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin