Arthur Ashkin, who won 2018 Physics Nobel Prize for inventing "optical tweezers"
Arthur Ashkin, who won 2018 Physics Nobel Prize for inventing "optical tweezers"Reuters

Three researchers, including a Jewish American, won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventions in the field of laser physics.

Arthur Ashkin, who retired after 40 years from Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1992, but remains active in his home laboratory, at 96 is the oldest ever Nobel laureate.

He started his work on manipulation of microparticles with laser light in the late 1960s which resulted in the invention of optical tweezers in 1986. Optical tweezers can grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers and have resulted in the invention of advanced precision instruments used in corrective eye surgery and in industry.

Nobel Prize for Physics 2018 award winners
Nobel Prize for Physics 2018 award winnersReuters

Ashkin won one half of the $1 million prize, with Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada sharing the other half for together developing a method to generate ultra-short optical pulses, which also is used in corrective eye surgery.

Ashkin also is known for his studies in photorefraction, second harmonic generation, and non-linear optics in fibers. He holds 47 patents.

His parents were immigrants from the Ukraine who married and settled in Brooklyn, where Ashkin was born. He received a PhD in nuclear physics from Cornell University.

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