Austro-Hungarian Physicist Ferenc Kraus to Donate Nobel Prize Money to Ukraine

Hungarian-born scientist Ferenc Kraus, one of the three laureates of the joint Nobel Prize in Physics awarded on October 3, has announced his intention to donate the prize money to a charitable organization he founded last year to aid Ukraine.

On Tuesday, October 3, the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2023 was jointly awarded to French researcher Pierre Agostini, French-Swedish atomic physicist Ann L'Yulie, and Austro-Hungarian physicist Ferenc Kraus. The decision was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

"The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2023 to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Kraus, and Ann L'Yulie for their experimental methods generating attosecond pulses of light to study the dynamics of electrons in matter," stated the Nobel Prize committee's announcement.

Their work demonstrated the ability to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to capture and investigate fast processes within atoms.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated that the experiments of the three laureates produced "light pulses so short that they are measured in attoseconds."

At present, an attosecond is the smallest measurable unit of time. One attosecond is equivalent to a quintillionth of a second. This is to a second what one second is to the age of the universe.

This work showcased that these incredibly short pulses could be used to study the behaviour of electrons.

Electrons are particles inside atoms, and they move at incredibly high speeds—on the order of billionths of a billionth of a second. Prior to the breakthrough by the laureates, they essentially appeared as blurred spots under the most advanced microscopes—their motion and behaviour were too fast to track.

Eva Olsson, the chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, stated, "Now we can open the doors to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics allows us to understand the mechanisms that govern electrons."

The contributions of the laureates have made it possible to study processes that were previously impossible to track due to their extreme speed.

The development in this direction is likely to lead to even more precise electronic microscopes, significantly faster electronics, and new tests capable of diagnosing diseases at much earlier stages.

The three winners will evenly share the monetary prize of 11 million Swedish kronor.