Tuesday, October 2, 2018

2108 Physics Nobel

In light of the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize that was announced today, I recall a story I did for The Scientist in 2005 about the development of optical tweezers by Art Ashkin and Steve Chu when both were at Bell Labs (I decline to link to the institution currently bearing that name). Some people at the time felt that the 1997 prize that Steve Chu shared should have included Ashkin, although the 1997 prize dealt with trapping atoms rather than beads and bacteria. If so, this recognition could be seen as correcting that.