Nobel Physics Prize 2023: Pierre Agostin, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier honoured for illuminating electrons
- Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier won for experiments that gave humanity new tools to explore the world of electrons in atoms and molecules
- LiHuillier is now just the fifth woman to receive a Nobel in physics
The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded on Tuesday to three scientists who look at electrons in atoms during the tiniest of split seconds.
Pierre Agostini of The Ohio State University in the US; Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany; and Anne L’Huillier of Lund University in Sweden won the award.
The trio were given the honour for their study of the tiny part of each atom that races around the centre and that is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.
Electrons move around so fast that they have been out of reach of human efforts to isolate them, but by looking at the tiniest fraction of a second possible – one quintillionth of a second known as an attosecond – scientists now have a “blurry” glimpse of them and that opens up whole new sciences, experts said.
“The electrons are very fast and the electrons are really the workforce in everywhere,” Nobel Committee member Mats Larsson said. “Once you can control and understand electrons you have taken a very big step forward.”