Donna Strickland

Lore & Background

Strickland was born on May 27, 1959, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada to Edith J. (née Ranney), an English teacher, and Lloyd Strickland, an electrical engineer. After graduating from Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute, she attended McMaster University, graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in engineering physics in 1981. She studied for her graduate degree in The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1989, conducting her doctoral research at the associated Laboratory for Laser Energetics, supervised by Gérard Mourou.

Strickland and Mourou worked to develop an experimental setup that could raise the peak power of laser pulses, overcoming a limitation where self-focusing of pulses damaged the amplifying part of the laser. Their 1985 technique of chirped pulse amplification stretched out each laser pulse spectrally and in time before amplifying it, then compressed each pulse back to its original duration, generating ultrashort optical pulses of terawatt to petawatt intensity. This work received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.

From 1988 to 1991, Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada, working with Paul Corkum. She worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1991 to 1992, joined Princeton University's Advanced Technology Center in 1992, and joined the University of Waterloo in 1997 as an assistant professor, becoming the first full-time female professor in physics there. She is currently a professor, leading an ultrafast laser group.

Reader's Guide

Donna Strickland's significance lies in her co-invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique that revolutionized laser physics by enabling the generation of ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulses. This breakthrough, achieved during her doctoral work with Gérard Mourou, overcame fundamental limitations in laser amplification and paved the way for practical applications such as laser micromachining, laser surgery, and corrective laser eye surgeries. Her Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 made her the third woman ever to receive that honor, after Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert Mayer. Beyond her research, Strickland has served as fellow, vice president, and president of Optica, and is chair of its Presidential Advisory Committee. She has also been recognized with numerous honors, including Companion of the Order of Canada and membership in the Royal Society. Her career, including her promotion to full professor after the Nobel, highlights both her technical contributions and her role as a prominent figure in physics.

Did You Know?

• She described herself as a 'laser jock' because experimentalists need to understand physics and make things work.
• She became the first full-time female professor in physics at the University of Waterloo.
• Strickland is an active member of the United Church of Canada.

The Birth of Chirped Pulse Amplification

Growing up in Guelph, Ontario, the daughter of an English teacher and an electrical engineer, Donna Strickland found her calling in the physics of light. She chose McMaster University specifically because its engineering physics curriculum included lasers and electro-optics, and she graduated in 1981 as one of just three women in a class of twenty-five. Her doctoral years at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics, completed in 1989 under the supervision of Gérard Mourou, produced the work that would define her legacy. At the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, she and Mourou confronted a stubborn limitation: once laser pulses reached gigawatts per square centimetre, self-focusing destroyed the amplifier. Their 1985 solution—stretching each pulse in time and spectrum before amplification, then compressing it back—yielded ultrashort beams of terawatt to petawatt intensity. The technique, published while Strickland was still a graduate student, made it possible to build powerful table-top terawatt lasers on an ordinary optical bench, transforming what had been an industrial-scale challenge into a laboratory-scale one.

From Laboratory Bench to the Frontiers of Ultrafast Science

Strickland's postdoctoral path took her through some of the world's most demanding laser environments. From 1988 to 1991 she worked at the National Research Council of Canada alongside Paul Corkum in a section that, at the time, housed the most powerful short-pulse laser on the planet. A brief stint at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory followed in 1991, then a move to Princeton's Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Opto-electronic Materials in 1992. In 1997 she joined the University of Waterloo as an assistant professor and became the institution's first full-time female professor in physics. She has described herself as a 'laser jock,' emphasizing that experimental work demands both deep physical understanding and the hands-on skill to coax finicky optics into working. Today she leads an ultrafast laser group pushing into the mid-infrared and ultraviolet, exploring multi-frequency and Raman generation techniques. She is also investigating how high-power lasers interact with the microcrystalline lens of the human eye, a line of research aimed at curing presbyopia through precision micromachining.

The Nobel and the Question of Rank

On October 2, 2018, Strickland and Gérard Mourou were announced as co-recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their development of chirped pulse amplification, while Arthur Ashkin received the other half for optical tweezers. Strickland became only the third woman to claim the physics prize, following Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963. The announcement sparked an unexpected controversy: commentators noted she had not yet held the rank of full professor. Strickland's response was characteristically blunt—she had simply never applied, explaining that the title 'doesn't carry necessarily a pay raise' and that the paperwork was not worth the effort. She subsequently applied and was promoted to full professor at Waterloo. The practical reach of her 1985 invention is immense: the ultrabrief, ultrasharp beams it produces enable laser micromachining, fundamental science investigations, and millions of corrective eye surgeries performed by doctors worldwide. Strickland recalled that even in the early days she and Mourou recognized the technique would prove to be a significant discovery.

Institutional Leadership and Enduring Recognition

Beyond her research, Strickland has shaped the institutional landscape of optics and photonics. She became a fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America) in 2008, served as its vice president in 2011 and president in 2013, and held a topical editorship of the journal Optics Letters from 2004 to 2010. She currently chairs Optica's Presidential Advisory Committee and has served as a board member and Director of Academic Affairs for the Canadian Association of Physicists. In 2023 she became an inaugural co-director of the Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology (TRuST) Scholarly Network at Waterloo. Her recognition extends well beyond the Nobel: she received the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998, the Premier's Research Excellence Award in 1999, the Cottrell Scholars Award in 2000, and the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. In 2018 she was named to the BBC's 100 Women list, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada established a prize bearing her name, ensuring that future generations of Canadian researchers will be measured against her standard.