Nobel Prize for Physics goes to US, French and Canadian scientists
Stockholm, Oct 2 : The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday to Arthur Ashkin of the US, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada, making her the third woman to receive the prestigious award.
The trio of laureates won the prize for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics.
Ashkin received the prize for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems, while Mourou and Strickland were jointly awarded for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Strickland became the first woman to receive the award in 55 years after Marie Curie won it in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963.
"We need to celebrate women physicists because we're out there. I'm honoured to be one of those women," Strickland said in a news conference following the announcement in Stockholm.
Speaking about being the third woman to ever win the award, she said she thought there might have been more, adding: "Hopefully in time it will start to move forward at a faster rate."
The inventions have revolutionised laser physics, as extremely small objects and incredibly rapid processes were now being seen in a new light.
Ashkin's optical tweezers are able to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers, allowing the American researcher to realise "an old dream of science fiction - using the radiation pressure of light to move physical objects".
The tweezers can capture living bacteria without harming them, a breakthrough he achieved back in 1987. Since then, these instruments have been widely used "to investigate the machinery of life", the Academy explained.
Mourou and Strickland, on the other hand, created ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses without destroying the amplifying material, thus paving the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind.
Their innovative technique, known as "chirped pulse amplification", has now become standard for high-intensity lasers, including the ultra-sharp beams used in corrective eye surgeries.
Ashkin, a New Yorker born in 1922, pursued his Ph.D at the prestigious Cornell University and conducted his Nobel-winning research at Bell Laboratories.
Mourou (born in 1944 in Albertville, France), was the founding director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan.
Strickland, who was born near Toronto, Canada in 1959, obtained her Ph.D at the University of Rochester with Mourou as her advisor, jointly developing the CPA technique.
The award announcement came one day after a senior scientist with Cern, the academic home to a number of Nobel prize winners, was suspended for saying that physics was invented and built by men.
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Supreme Court rejects plea for reverting to ballots in elections
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking to revert to ballot paper voting in elections in the country.
"What happens is, when you win the election, EVMs (electronic voting machine) are not tampered. When you lose the election, EVMs are tampered (with)," remarked a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and P B Varale.
Apart from ballot paper voting, the plea sought several directions including a directive to the Election Commission to disqualify candidates for a minimum of five years if found guilty of distributing money, liquor or other material inducement to the voters during polls.
When petitioner-in-person K A Paul said he filed the PIL, the bench said, "You have interesting PILs. How do you get these brilliant ideas?".
The petitioner said he is the president of an organisation which has rescued over three lakh orphans and 40 lakh widows.
"Why are you getting into this political arena? Your area of work is very different," the bench retorted.
After Paul revealed he had been to over 150 countries, the bench asked him whether each of the nations had ballot paper voting or used electronic voting.
The petitioner said foreign countries had adopted ballot paper voting and India should follow suit.
"Why you don't want to be different from the rest of the world?" asked the bench.
There was corruption and this year (2024) in June, the Election Commission announced they had seized Rs 9,000 crore, Paul responded.
"But how does that make your relief which you are claiming here relevant?" asked the bench, adding "if you shift back to physical ballot, will there be no corruption?".
Paul claimed CEO and co-founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, stated that EVMs could be tampered with and added TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, the current chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and former state chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy had claimed EVMs could be tampered with.
"When Chandrababu Naidu lost, he said EVMs can be tampered with. Now this time, Jagan Mohan Reddy lost, he said EVMs can be tampered with," noted the bench.
When the petitioner said everybody knew money was distributed in elections, the bench remarked, "We never received any money for any elections."
The petitioner said another prayer in his plea was the formulation of a comprehensive framework to regulate the use of money and liquor during election campaigns and ensuring such practices were prohibited and punishable under the law.
The plea further sought a direction to mandate an extensive voter education campaign to raise awareness and importance of informed decision making.
"Today, 32 per cent educated people are not casting their votes. What a tragedy. If democracy will be dying like this and we will not be able to do anything then what will happen in the years to come in future," the petitioner said.
