Donna Strickland, from Canada, is only the third woman in history to win the award, along with Marie Curie, who won in 1903, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who was awarded the prize in 1963.
Dr Strickland shares this year’s prize with Arthur Ashkin, from the US, and Gerard Mourou, from France.
Dr Strickland said on a phone call to the press conference:
“We need to celebrate women physicists because we’re out there, and hopefully in time it’ll start to move forward at a faster rate.
I’m honoured to be one of those women.”
The announcement that a woman had been awarded the prize for physics comes just a day after Italian scientist Professor Alessandro Strumia was suspended by Cern for saying that “physics was invented and built by men” in a talk.
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