Donna Stricklands research has led to the strongest laser that ever existed. The technology is used in research, but also at the millions of eye surgery each year to correct the refractive error.
the Road towards the breakthrough began with a setback. Donna Stricklands supervisor during her time as a graduate student at the University of Rochester in the united states in the 1980s had managed to get a company to donate an expensive tow to a research project. The cable was two and a half kilometers long and rolled up on a coil. To access the cable’s both ends was Donna Strickland had to roll it up to a different coil.
Afterwards I discovered that it had gone by. It went off in the middle – the worst that could happen, ” said Donna Strickland.
to hope that the half of the cable would suffice. The plan was simple: Take a short laser pulse, stretch it in time, reinforce it and then press it back together again. The point is that the lengthy duration of the pulse goes to reinforce without the amplifier burns up.
Fiberkabelns task was to stretch out ljuspulsen. Donna Strickland spent almost a year to build his laser. One day in may 1985 it was finished.
” Then actually came a real eureka moment. It happened near midnight, and there was no doubt. The laser worked!!!
Photo: Hampus Andersson
with champagne. Donna Strickland, who was then 26 years old, described the results in his personal career very first scientific report. For the she gets now to a nobel Prize in physics.
It may also be her supervisor Gérard Mourou. He helped with the champagne, and additionally with a basic idea. But it was Donna Strickland who first succeeded in strengthening the laser beams in a way that revolutionized the entire laser physics.
The only women who previously been awarded a nobel Prize in physics Marie Curie (1903) and Maria Goeppert Mayer (1963).
” It’s great to be in their company, especially Marie Curie. She sacrificed her life for science. I would never do, ” said Donna Strickland.
over that female researchers often face the resistance of male colleagues are spared, but says that it does not have hit her myself. When she was in high school in Canada had three students in her class awards for their performance in mathematics. All three were women.
” It was me and two girlfriends. No one thought it was strange, and not I either, ” said Donna Strickland.
But of course, she has seen the shabby attitudes. Her sister took a engineering education and showed her the lyrics that were sung during the welcoming. It was about Lady Godiva, a naked virgin to the horse. Grabbigt, thought Donna Strickland. But there was nothing that prevented her from training to the engineer.
Gérard Mourou has been under fire for a video with at least said grabbig choreography. He dances in the company of female students and dancers of the time who pull themselves labbrockarna in time with the music and showing their underwear.
Donna Strickland says that she thought the film was funny when she first saw it eight years ago, but admits that her former supervisor made a fool of himself.
“It was a setback, but he is not a sexist, He himself had a female supervisor when he was a graduate student, and he put me – a woman – on a project that he knew was very important,” said Donna Strickland.
with a father who was an engineer in electrical engineering and a mother who was a teacher of the English language – but rather had wanted to study mathematics and science.
She was advised against. Such was considered not to fit a girl. It was completely wrong and I was brought up to follow my interests, which I have done, ” said Donna Strickland.
