Canadian Donna Strickland won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday, sharing it with an American scientist and another from France for their work in laser physics. Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, became the first woman in 55 years and the third ever to win the award.
Donna Strickland, from Canada, is only the third woman winner of the award, along with Marie Curie, who won in 1903, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who was awarded the prize in 1963.
Dr Strickland shares this year's prize with Arthur Ashkin, from the US, and Gerard Mourou, from France.
It recognises their discoveries in the field of laser physics.
Dr Ashkin developed a laser technique described as optical tweezers, which is used to study biological systems.
Drs Mourou and Strickland paved the way for the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created. They developed a technique called Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA). It has found uses in laser therapy targeting cancer and in the millions of corrective laser eye surgeries which are performed each year.
Speaking to the PBS, Dr Strickland said it was "surprising" it had been such a long time since a woman had won the award.
However, she stressed that she had "always been treated as an equal", and that "two men also won it with me, and they deserve this prize as much if not more than me".
The last woman to win the physics prize, German-born American physicist Maria Goeppert-Mayer, took the award for her discoveries about the nuclei of atoms.
Polish-born physicist Marie Curie shared the 1903 award with her husband Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel for their research into radioactivity.
