2023-10-01 13:55:03
By Caty Arevalo
His discoveries in ultrashort pulse lasers have made it possible to cure a multitude of eye diseases. Now, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, Donna Strickland aims to improve the basic science behind laser ablation to make this technique even more effective in the treatment of brain tumors or epilepsy.
Strickland visited Madrid to collect the Gold Medal from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and give a keynote lecture.
– What are you going to talk about to Spanish scientists, students and authorities?
“What people have wanted to know for five years: what I did to win the Nobel Prize in Physics,” says the Canadian scientist, a 64-year-old woman, affable, friendly and very didactic, laughing.
– And what is the answer? “I have never been someone who set out to achieve something big, like a Nobel Prize. “I have been a person who has simply really enjoyed playing with science in the lab, particularly with lasers, and who wants to continue doing so.”
On a high school field trip to the University of Ontario, when she was just 16 years old, Strickland first saw the laser technology that decades later she perfected until she won a Nobel Prize and was fascinated by it.
“We’re talking about the beginning of the 70s, then you didn’t see lasers anywhere, and I had something similar to a revelation I guess – he laughs again – and I said to myself, I want to learn a lot more about this.”
“I think school or college are good times for young people to play with different things and find what they like to do,” he explains.
“I am not one of those who believes that science is for everyone. Science is for those who find it easy and fun to play with these types of things that we scientists do, and, also, have a lot of patience because if not you will get frustrated very soon and you will not get anywhere.”
“If science amuses you and you have that patience, you must fight so that nothing prevents you from devoting yourself to it,” says Strickland when asked what young girls would say to encourage them to pursue STEM careers.
In 2018, she was the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in more than a century of history, after Marie Curie (1903) and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963).
Strickland did not know this information when they called her to inform her that she had been awarded, and she did not even have an entry in Wikipedia until that moment, which perfectly exemplifies how many of the great advances in science – and humanity – start from humble researchers. and anonymous -beyond his field- and his great perseverance and tenacity.
The work of the Canadian engineer and physicist, who invented Pulse Amplification when she was only 26 years old, has been fundamental in perfecting and making short pulse lasers more powerful, a technology thanks to which eye diseases are cured or we have cell phones with those that can do (almost) everything.
Advances in this line of research, in which it has been a pioneer, “involves refining our findings in such a way that we can manufacture very high intensity lasers, with a greater particle acceleration capacity in such a way that they allow us to delve deeper into the brain with radiation treatments.”
The researcher acknowledges that between COVID and her Nobel commitments, she does not spend as much time as she would like in the laboratory: “before the award, she probably went five times a day just to play with the students in the laboratory and see what happened. I am a person who needs to visualize what is being done, roll up my sleeves and see what the problems are.”
Although he insists that whenever he is in Ontario he never misses an opportunity to go to his laboratory at the University of Waterloo to “play” with the research projects underway and talk to students, he also claims to “understand that now I have a much bigger voice.” great, and that is why I feel that I must dedicate time to promoting science and the challenges we face.”
Of all these challenges, the one that Strickland considers most urgent is the environment: “We are trying to bring together environmental scientists who do not have the appropriate technological tools to do what they want to do with researchers more dedicated to technological development, for example optical sensors, and “form collaboration networks that allow us to improve environmental surveillance systems.”
“If we manage to bring these two groups together, perhaps we can accelerate the technology necessary for better monitoring and understanding of environmental problems that will allow us to better address them, because this understanding requires a huge number of measurements,” emphasizes the scientist, who It is already engaged in collaborative work of this type on the Arctic with the University of Laval (Quebec).
Just a few weeks ago the Pope appointed Strickland, of Protestant religion, a member of the Royal Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Although she has not yet had the opportunity to attend any meeting, she has been able to speak with representatives of the Vatican about what is expected of her “they want to be up to date with the latest scientific advances, that they respond to the challenges of humanity and that They are ethical.”
“And what I have already been able to verify is Pope Francis’ concern for the environment,” he says.
At the end of the interview, Strickland goes to collect his recognition and give his keynote speech in which, as in the interview, there are two verbs that he repeats notably: play and have fun.
While she speaks, it seems that the song that she herself played when she had to speak at the Nobel banquet is playing in the background: “Girls just wanna have fun.”
EFE.
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