The physicist Ferenc Krausz, who teaches in Garching, accepted his award together with the other winners of the scientific Nobel Prizes on Sunday in Stockholm. The Swedish King Carl XVI. Gustaf presented him and another three women and six men with this year’s Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine and economics. The Norwegian Jon Fosse received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Krausz, who was born in Hungary, works at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and, with Anne L’Huillier and Pierre Agostini, has found a way to generate extremely short light pulses with which even the extremely fast movement of electrons can be measured. With the help of these light pulses, it becomes possible to make the world of electrons visible, something Nobel Prize winner in physics Werner Heisenberg (1901 to 1976) thought was impossible almost 100 years ago, said academician Eva Olsson in her laudatory speech.
With the Nobel Prize for Krausz, the Max Planck Society is continuing a very special series. Since 2020, at least one member of the society has received the Nobel Prize every year. There were six in total. The dance started with the French Emmanuelle Charpentier, who conducts research in Berlin.
French-born L’Huillier is only the fifth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. She was to sit next to the king at the banquet.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to US researchers Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov, who were honored for the discovery and development of so-called quantum dots. Quantum dots are used, among other things, in modern QLED televisions and play a role in quantum computers, increasing the efficiency of solar cells and in cancer medicine. But they could also help to develop more powerful solar cells.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman accepted the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Her work on mRNA technology has, among other things, made the development of corona vaccines possible. They helped develop vaccines at an unprecedented pace, contain a devastating pandemic and save millions of lives, said the chairwoman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Medicine, Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam. Karikó and Weissman would have made a contribution to the greatest benefit of humanity, in keeping with the spirit of the prize founder Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).
The US economist Claudia Goldin received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her research on the role of women in the labor market.
The Nobel Prize in Literature went to the Norwegian writer Fosse. According to the Nobel Museum, the 64-year-old donated four notebooks containing an unpublished book.
The Nobel Prizes were founded by the chemist, entrepreneur and inventor Alfred Nobel. They are traditionally presented on the anniversary of his death, December 10th – the Nobel Peace Prize is the only one in Oslo, all others in Stockholm. This year, the award comes with prize money of eleven million Swedish crowns (around 975,000 euros) in each category.
The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is the only one that did not go back to Nobel’s will, but was donated by the Swedish Reichsbank at the end of the 1960s. Strictly speaking, it is therefore not one of the classic Nobel Prizes, but is presented along with them.
