Anne L’Huillier, the fifth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in more than 100 years

The French physicist Anne L’Huillier has today become the fifth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize of Physics in the more than one hundred years of history since these awards began to be granted, which have recognized more than two hundred men.

Anne L`Huillier has today been recognized with the Nobel Prize along with her compatriot Pierre Agostini and the Hungarian Ferenc Krausz, for their experimental methods to generate light pulses lasting attoseconds for the study of the dynamics of electrons in matter.

The Frenchwoman thus joins that tiny group of women who have obtained the Physics award, of which three have achieved it in the last five years.

A group that was inaugurated in 1903 by the Polish Marie Curie – which she would repeat years later with the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 – for the discoveries she made with her husband in the field of radioactivity.

Sixty years passed before another woman, the German-American Maria Goeppert-Mayer, obtained the prize for her discoveries in the nuclear shell model, although she spent much of her career as a researcher. “voluntary” in several universities and without receiving any remuneration for it.

Already in the 21st century, the Canadian physical engineer Donna Strickland won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 for her pioneering research in the field of lasers.

This small group was expanded in 2020 with the award to the American astronomer Andrea Ghez for her work in the study of compact and supermassive objects in the Universe.

Today, that group of women awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics has expanded to five with the addition of the Frenchwoman Anne L’Huillier.