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An emeritus professor at Ohio State University was one of three researchers awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics Tuesday. Pierre Agostini, who has been a member of OSU’s physics faculty since 2005; Ferenc Krausz, who is affiliated with two German institutions; and Anne L’Huillier, of Lund University in Sweden, received the honor for developing new strategies to understand the rapid movements of electrons.
The technology uses incredibly short flashes of light—each only the length of a few attoseconds, or quintillionths of a second—to create snapshots of the electrons’ positions.
“We can now open the door to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics gives us the opportunity to understand mechanisms that are governed by electrons,” said Eva Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee for physics, according to the press release. “The next step will be utilizing them.”
Agostini said in an interview with the Nobel Prize committee that he at first thought he had been awarded the prize by mistake; he was surprised to be recognized so long after he conducted the award-winning experiments in 2001.
But, he said, “better late than never.”
