This is the scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Steve Mursky.

The main practical application of CPA so far has been in the eye surgery. It was the first one and I think it is the one that is used by the most

people for something practical. Donna Strickland on the phone this morning with

Jordan Hanson of the Nobel Assembly at the Carolinska Institute after learning that she had shared the

Nobel Prize in physics. CPA is chirped pulse amplification, a technique for producing incredibly short pulses of laser

light of very high intensity.

A few minutes before talking with Strickland, Hanson made the announcement.

This year's prize is about tools made from light.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

has today decided to award the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics with one half

to Arthur Ashkin for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.

And the other half jointly to

Sharar Muru and Donna Strickland for their method of generating

high intensity ultra- short optical pulses.

Arthur Ashkin was born in 1922 in New York City.

He made his remarkable invention at the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in the United States.

Shera Muru was born in 1944 in Albertville in France, and he is currently at the Ecol Politique in Palaiso in France,

and also affiliated with the University of Michigan in the United States.

Donna Strickland was born in 1959 in Gulf, Ontario, Canada,

and she's currently at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Dr. Muru and Strickland did much of their groundbreaking work together at the University of Rochester in the United States.

Physicist Olga Botner, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, added,

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