Amplifying the Spotlight: Donna Strickland

Since the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901, more than 600 men have received the honour in the sciences—physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine—while fewer than 30 women have been recognised. The imbalance is particularly striking in physics, where, out of over 200 laureates, only four have been women: Marie Curie (1903), Maria Goeppert Mayer (1963), Donna Strickland (2018), and Anne L’Huillier (2023). That means women make up less than 2% of all Nobel laureates in physics—a field that still struggles with gender parity at every level, from classrooms to laboratories.

In 2018, when the Nobel Committee announced Donna Strickland’s name, it had been 55 years since a woman last won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Strickland’s recognition didn’t just mark a scientific milestone—it became a moment of reckoning for the discipline itself, forcing the world to ask why it takes decades for women’s brilliance in physics to be acknowledged.

Donna Stickland in her lab Courtesy of University of Waterloo

Born in 1959 in Guelph, Ontario, Strickland grew up in a family that valued both language and logic: her mother was an English teacher, and her father an electrical engineer. She excelled in math and physics in school.  She then joined McMaster University’s engineering physics program, which featured courses on lasers, and graduating in 1981 as one of only three women in a class of twenty-five.

At 22, Strickland began her PhD at the University of Rochester, working under French physicist Gérard Mourou. Mourou was exploring how to make laser pulses more intense without self-destruction of the equipment parts . His idea was to stretch out a laser pulse in time, amplify it, and then compress it again, producing a much more powerful burst of light.

Strickland was assigned, as she put it, “to take Gérard’s beautiful idea and make it a reality.” Together, they did just that. The resulting technique, chirped pulse amplification, fundamentally transformed laser physics. Strickland described the satisfaction of that discovery: “It is truly an amazing feeling when you know that you have built something that no one else ever has – and it actually works.”

The work, published in 1985 as her first scientific paper, became one of the most cited in optics and laid the foundation for her Nobel Prize decades later.

Despite her groundbreaking research, Strickland’s academic path wasn’t straightforward. After earning her PhD in 1989, she spent eight years without a full-time university position, citing the “two-body problem”—a challenge faced by dual-academic couples. When she married physicist Doug Dykaar, finding jobs in the same city proved difficult, and her career was often the one that had to adapt.

She worked at research institutions including Bell Labs, the National Research Council of Canada, and Princeton’s Advanced Technology Center, before finally landing a faculty position at the University of Waterloo in 1997. There, she built the Ultrafast Laser Group and eventually became associate chair of physics.

Ironically, when Donna Strickland received the Nobel Prize, she was still listed as an associate professor—not due to institutional neglect, but because, in her own words, “I just never applied for full professor. I’m a lazy person. I do what I want to do and that wasn’t worth doing”—a disarmingly candid admission in a field often defined by hierarchy and titles.

Her recognition also came at a time when debates about gender bias in science were growing louder. Just weeks before the announcement, Italian physicist Alessandro Strumia had declared at CERN that physics was “invented and built by men,” a statement that revealed how deeply entrenched such biases still were—and how vital Strickland’s visibility had become.

Her win threw a spotlight not only on her achievements but also on the persistent invisibility of women in physics. Despite decades of groundbreaking work and several professional honors, Strickland did not have a Wikipedia page until the month she won the Nobel Prize; an earlier attempt to create one had been rejected for “lack of notability.” The irony was not lost on the public: a scientist who had transformed laser physics had remained unseen in the world’s most visible encyclopedia.

At the University of Waterloo, Strickland has worked to increase the number of women in her department, encouraging young physicists to persist in a field that often overlooks them. Her efforts and achievements have shifted attention toward inclusion, making it harder for future generations of women in physics to remain unseen or excluded from the narrative.

Written by Janaky S. and edited by Parvathy Ramachandran

References:

1. https://www.nobelprize.org/stories/women-who-changed-science/donna-strickland/
2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donna-Strickland
3. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/20/nobel-laureate-donna-strickland-i-see-myself-as-a-scientist-not-a-woman-in-science