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Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Scientists Studying Electrons

Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier studied the movement of electrons during just a tiny fraction of a second.

The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three scientists behind experiments “exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules,” the Nobel committee said Tuesday. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier studied the movement of electrons during just a tiny fraction of a second, since electrons move too fast to be examined otherwise. “They have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. L’Huillier, a professor at Sweden’s Lund University, is the fifth woman to be awarded the physics prize. Agostini is a professor emeritus at Ohio State University, and Krausz is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.