(Stockholm) The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to three researchers who looked at the movement of electrons for a tiny fraction of a second inside atoms.
Pierre Agostini, from Ohio State University in the United States, Ferenc Krausz, from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany, and Anne L’Huillier, from Lund University in Sweden, are the winners of this year.
Their experiments “gave humanity new tools to explore the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the prize winners in Stockholm.
The researchers “presented a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.”
The Nobel Prizes come with a reward of 11 million Swedish crowns (1.3 million). These sums come from the inheritance left by the creator of the prize, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.
Last year, three scientists jointly won the Nobel Prize in physics for proving that tiny particles could maintain a connection with each other even when separated.
On Monday, the American of Hungarian origin Katalin Karikó and the American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries which enabled the rapid development of messenger RNA vaccines against COVID-19.
The announcement of Nobel Prize winners will continue throughout the week, with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and the literature prize on Thursday. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday.
The winners are invited to receive their prize at a ceremony which takes place each year on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The prestigious Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, according to his wishes, while the other award ceremony takes place in Stockholm.