Donna Strickland

Donna Theo Strickland (born May 27, 1959) is a Canadian physicist known for her fundamental contributions to laser optics. Together with Gérard Mourou, she developed the technique of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), which makes it possible to generate extremely intense laser pulses without damaging optical materials. This innovation has had important applications in laser eye surgery, high-energy physics, and advanced scientific research. For this work, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, becoming the third woman to receive this honor in that category.

Quotes

• In high school, I was very good in math and physics. I wasn’t good at much of anything else. Some people are good at a lot of things. I don’t know how they choose what to do. I couldn’t do athletic stuff, I wasn’t artistic, I have no musical ear, and I wasn’t good at writing. So I was pretty narrow in what I could do. I wasn’t thinking, “Can I do science?” I was thinking, “That’s the only thing I can do, so let’s do it."
• If somebody else thinks something that you don't believe in, just think they're wrong and you're right and keep going. That's pretty much the way I always think.