Physics Nobel for laser pioneers includes first woman in 55 years

Stockholm/London: 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. They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years.

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.

"Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists," Strickland said shortly after learning of the prize.

The Nobel prizes have long been dominated by male scientists, and none more so than physics.

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.

Strickland later spoke of how her predecessor, Goeppert Mayer, had been "allowed to follow her husband from job to job while he... went up the ranks as a professor," while she was only allowed to teach or do unpaid research.

"Women have come a long way," she told a news conference in Canada.

Her win comes a day after Europe's physics research centre CERN suspended an Italian scientist, Alessandro Strumia, for telling a seminar at the organisation's Swiss headquarters last week that physics was "invented and built by men" and that women were now being favoured in hiring for research positions.

Jessica Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who was at the CERN event and unhappy about Strumia's comments, said having a female Nobel winner was also important given the current fight over US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who is facing sexual misconduct allegations.

"This news could not come at a better time," Wade told Reuters. "After a week where a woman has been forced to describe her sexual assault to a live television audience of billions, and an academic at a prestigious university has said that women are unfairly promoted into senior positions in physics, even I – the eternal optimist – was starting to lose hope."

For the first time in decades no Nobel Prize for literature will be given this year after a scandal over sexual misconduct allegations saw a string of members leave the board of the Swedish Academy that awards it.