Donna Theo Strickland
Personal Information
Born: 1959
Country of Birth: Canada
Nationality: Canadian
Ethnicity: White
Education
McMaster University BE Engineering Physics 1981; University of Rochester PhD Optics 1989
Professional Life
Field of Study: Physics; Optics
Institution/Corporation: University of Waterloo; National Research Council of Canada; Lawrence Livermore National Lab; Princeton University; University of Rochester
Degrees & Memberships: Member: Fellow Optical Society of America (OSA now Optica 2008) Canadian Association of Physicists; Fellow Optical Society (2008) The Canadian Academy of Engineering (2019) Fellow Royal Society of Canada (2019) National Academy of Sciences (2020) Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS 2020) Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2021) Honorary Member of Optica (2022) International Society for Optics & Photonics (SPIE)
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics (with Gerard Mourou); 2018 BBC's 100 Women; 1998 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; 1998 Premier's Research Excellence Award; 2000 Cottrell Scholars Award Research Corporation; 2019 Golden Plate Award American Academy of Achievement; 2019 Companion of the Order of Canada; 2022 Insignia of Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur; 2018 Rochester Distinguished Scholar Award; 2018 George Eastman Medal University of Rochester; 2022 Rev. Joseph Carrier C.S.C. Science Medal University of Notre Dame
Achievements: Pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers
2018 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics for invention of chirped pulse amplification (CPA), a method of making pulses of laser light of high power & short duration with Gerard Mourou
3rd woman awarded a Nobel in Physics
Her Nobel discovery was accomplished as a doctoral student at the University of Rochester; Mourou was her doctoral advisor
After earning a PhD in Optics from the University of Rochester in 1989, it took 9 years for her to find a full-time university position
Her 1985 paper on CPA was the 1st she had ever published