An "an old dream of science fiction" had been to use the radiation pressure of light to move objects, according to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Sweden.The other half of the physics award went jointly to Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou for their work on laser pulses.Donna Strickland is the first woman in 55 years to have won a physics prize, according to an official with the American Institute of Physics . "Before, it was iffy.”

Members of the Nobel Committee for Physics, from left, Olga Botner, Goran K Hansson and Mats Larsson, sit in front of a screen displaying portraits of Arthur Ashkin of the United States, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada during the announcement of the winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on October 2, 2018 in Stockholm. Sweden’s Royal Academy of Sciences, which chose the winners, said Ashkin’s development of “optical tweezers” that can grab tiny particles such as viruses without damaging them realized “an old dream of science fiction — using the radiation pressure of light to move physical objects.”

The tweezers are “extremely important for measuring small forces on individual molecules, small objects, and this has been very interesting in biology, to understand how things like muscle tissue work, what are the molecule motors behind the muscle tissue,” said David Haviland of the academy’s Nobel committee. Meanwhile Mourou, 74, and Strickland — only the third woman to win the Physics Prize — won for together developing a method to generate ultra-short optical pulses, “the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind,” the jury said. More: Oldest Nobel Prize winner: 'I was always afraid I wasn’t smart enough'

That was a record-breaking year for women, who took home five Nobel Prizes, coming up short only in peace and physics (Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider shared the award for medicine). “Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists, because we’re out there. And hopefully, in time it’ll start to move forward at a faster rate, maybe,” Strickland said in a phone call with the academy after the prize announcement. Michael Moloney, CEO of the American Institute of Physics, praised all the laureates and said “It is also a personal delight to see Dr. Strickland break the 55-year hiatus since a woman has been awarded a Nobel Prize in physics, making this year’s award all the more historic.”

He credited the work of all three with “expanding what is possible at the extremes of time, space and forms of matter.”

On Monday, American James Allison and Japan’s Tasuku Honjo won the Nobel medicine prize for groundbreaking work in fighting cancer with the body’s own immune system. The work of both men led to new cancer treatments.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded on Wednesday.The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday.The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded on Monday, Oct. 8.The literature award will not be given out this year, the Academy announced in May , due to sexual assault allegations against Jean-Claude Arnault.Arnault is a major cultural figure in Sweden who is married to a member of the Swedish Academy and who ran a cultural group closely tied to the academy. The economics prize, which is not technically a Nobel, will be announced on Oct. 8.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland for their work using lasers to manipulate microscopic objects. Strickland is the first woman to win this award in 55 years.