Hungarian-Born Scientist Receives Physics Nobel-Prize

Hungarian-born experimental physicist Ferenc Krausz, who has been the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Optics in Germany, shares the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics with French scientists Pierre Agostini and Anne L’Huillier for “experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”, according to the award-giving body, the the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In its statement published this Tuesday, the Academy said “the laureates’ experiments have produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules."

The announcement comes just a day after another Hungarian scientist, biochemist Katalin Karikó being named as the co-recipient of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. 

The winners will share a total of SEK 11 million. The prize is traditionally awarded on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the founder of the prize.