On October 2^nd, Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, won the Nobel Prize in physics. Strickland is the third woman ever to win the Physics Nobel, and the first woman to win the award in 55 years.

Strickland won the prize along with Arthur Askin, a retired American physicist, and Gerard Mourou, a researcher from Ecole Polytechnique located in France. The 3 worked together to invent a new laser called Chirped-Pulse Amplification. The procedure can produce intense laser pulses and be used during laser eye surgery, as well as other things.

The first Nobel Prize in physics was given in 1901, and before Strickland, only two women had received them. In a statement Strickland made, she said: “We need to celebrate women physicists because they’re out there… I’m honored to be one of those women.” The first woman to win a Physics Nobel was Marie Curie in 1903 for her research on radiation, and the second woman to win this prize was Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963 for her work on nuclear shell structures.