After Maria Goeppert Mayer, The Nobel Prize award winner, it’s taken 55 years almost for a women, here Donna Strickland to win a Nobel Prize. This year Donna Strickland from Canada has won the Nobel Prize in Physics and she is the first female to do that since 1963. The prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau revealed the news and said that she was awarded the Nobel Prize alongside her colleague Dr. Gerard Mourou. The Nobel Prize was awarded for her vital contribution to science through the development of a new technique for creating short and intense laser pulses. This is a ground breaking form of science and has found its applications in various areas like corrective eye surgery besides its significant usage in cancer therapy as well as other research in areas of physics.

UNESCO congratulated these Physics laureates and also said that it was an encouraging news for women to take up science as their career path. As per Ms Azoulay of UNESCO it was a motivating news for the youngsters who are set to write the future of the world tomorrow. She also harped upon the need for more brilliant and innovative minds in the field of science and technology, in order to handle the challenges the future is going to throw in at the world.

UNESCO has already released a report in the past that highlights the gender bias against women in science. In the research field, there are as low as 30% percent of female researchers. The research also highlights how women are represented very less even in most of the prestigious universities of the world. This gender bias does affect the overall society.

Hence, the news of a female winning a Noble Prize in Science is a matter of great pride and hope for not only the UNESCO for the whole world it seems.

Donna Theo Strickland
An electrical engineer by profession, Strickland is an MS, PhD. and has attended the Mc Master University of Rochester only because its engineering physics program offered lasers as well as electro-optics.

She received the Noble Prize on October 2, 2018 for her work on chirped pulse amplification. Strickland said that while working on its development she was quite positive that it would be a significant discovery. She is the third women after Maria Curie, 1939 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 to win a Nobel Prize in Physics.

*Sourced from the Internet