Nobel Prize in Physics 2023: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier crowned for their work on electrons

The day after the Nobel Prize in Medicine, it is Physics’ turn to be in the spotlight. This year again, France is still at the forefront.

Indeed, three scientists were rewarded, including two French, this Tuesday, October 3: Pierre Agostini (from Ohio University), Ferenc Krausz (from the University of Munich in Germany) and Anne L’Huillier (from Lund University in Sweden). Ferenc Krausz is of Hungarian origin.

They were rewarded for “for experimental methods that generate attosecond light pulses for the study of electron dynamics in matter“, clarified the Academy.

The three physicists succeeded in creating pulses of light on the order of attoseconds. “An attosecond is so short that itthere are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe“, notes the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The fifth woman to receive the Physics prize

Anne L’Huillier, who teaches at Lund University in Sweden, is the fifth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics since 1901. She explained this Tuesday that she received the call from the jury while she was giving a lesson. “I am very touched, there are not that many women who have won the prize, so it is very, very special,” she reacted to the Academy.
“I am a happy and proud minister. This shows, on the one hand, the quality of our training and then, (on the other hand), very high quality of our universities, of our schools. (I send) a special message. (I am) very proud to see a woman Nobel Prize winner”, greets Sylvie Retailleau, the Minister of Higher Education and Research exclusively at the microphone of RTL.
“I think it’s a message for our young girls. We need them in these sciences and this is a good example“, she added.
In 2022, it was the Frenchman Alain Aspect who was rewarded by the Nobel Academy. He received this distinction alongside the American John Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger for their work on revolutionary mechanisms of quantum physics.

A unique reward

The Nobel Prize season continues on Wednesday with Chemistry, then the Literature Prize on Thursday and the Peace Prize on Friday before the Economics Prize on Monday.

For the winners of the 2023 vintage, the prize is accompanied by a reward of eleven million Swedish crowns (920,000 euros), the highest nominal value in the more than century-old history of the Nobels.