Nobel Prize in Physics – 2018

On Tuesday, 02 October 2018, Arthur Ashkin of the United States, who pioneered a way of using light to manipulate physical objects, shared the first half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. The second half was divided equally between Gérard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. With this announcement, Donna Strickland, who was awarded the Nobel for herwork as a PhD student with GérardMourou, became the third woman to have ever won the Physics Nobel Prize, and the 96-year-old Arthur Ashkin who was awarded for his work on optical tweezers and their application to biological systems, became the oldest Nobel Prize winner. According to Nobel.org, the practical applications leading to the Prize in 2018 are tools made of light that have revolutionised laser physics–a discipline which in turn is represented by generations of advancements and not just a single example of brilliant work. © 2018, Indian Academy of Sciences.