University of Michigan Professor Gerard Mourou has won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for his inventions in the field of laser physics.
Mourou, who is an emeritus professor of electrical engineering, won the award with Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories, New Jersey and Canadian physicist Donna Strickland.
According to the University of Michigan, Mourou did most of his research at the university when he was a faculty member for 16 years, before retiring in 2004. He founded Center for Ultrafast Optical Science which developed intense laser HERCULES and bladeless version of LASIK eye surgery.
“We’re immensely proud of Mourou and Strickland and the important work they did to move laser technology forward and to bring it from the lab to the outside world,” said Alec D. Gallimore, the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering.
Mourou is further known for developing chirped pulse amplification technique of optics.
“Chirped pulse amplification has made possible the most powerful laser systems in the world. It has had applications that range from fundamental science—like creating elementary particles, accelerating particles to extreme energies and really probing the processes that go on in matter—all the way to materials processing and medicine,” said Herbert Winful, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and added, “Mourou is a visionary.”