Senators’ Statements: Congratulating Canadian Physicist Dr. Donna Strickland on her Nobel Prize
Honourable senators, I rise today to celebrate Dr. Donna Strickland, a Canadian physicist and associate professor at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work with lasers.
She is just the third woman in history to have been awarded this prize in physics and joins 22 other Canadians who are Nobel laureates who call Canada home, including Frederick Banting and Alice Munro.
Dr. Strickland’s winning research stems from her doctoral thesis in 1985. She and her co-winner, Dr. Gérard Mourou of France, succeeded in creating ultra-short high-intensity laser pulses known today as chirped pulse amplification. As you can probably guess, I have very little understanding of the medical sciences, but I am married to an engineer who explained to me that Dr. Strickland’s work and its application has led to revolutions in surgery.
I have been on the surgeon’s table more times than I wish, and I know the difference between invasive surgery, on the one hand, and laser surgery, on the other. Given our average age here in the chamber, I imagine we want to be very grateful to her and in fact very proud of her.
Dr. Strickland has been largely unknown to date, and it is not surprising to discover that she is a modest and humble person. There is very little you can find about her on the Net, although I suspect this will now change.
During her press conference, Dr. Strickland asked us to focus on her female colleagues and said, “We need to celebrate women physicists because we’re out there.” And we need to encourage them. Currently, four of five seats in a STEM university program are filled by men. Role models matter. Now with Dr. Strickland as a Nobel laureate, I am hoping that we will see these numbers shift.
One day soon, I hope we will be able to honour Dr. Strickland in person. Until then, please join me in sending our congratulations to an extraordinary woman and an extraordinary Canadian. May she inspire wonder and curiosity in all of us.