Nobel prize in physics awarded to three scientists for work on electrons | Nobel prizes

Three scientists have been awarded the 2023 Nobel prize in physics for their work on creating extremely short pulses of light that can be harnessed to study processes occurring inside atoms and molecules.

Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier share the 11m Swedish kronor (£823,000) prize announced on Tuesday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

This year’s award is the 117th Nobel prize to be presented in Physics since 1901. L’Huillier is only the fifth woman to receive the prize.

Speaking at the press conference, L’Huillier said she was teaching when she received the call to tell her she had won the Nobel Prize in physics.

“The last half hour of my lecture was difficult to do,” she said. “As you know there are not so many women that get this prize, so it is very, very special,” she added.

The Nobel committee awarded the prize “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.

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