NPR

The Nobel Prize In Physics: 117 Years, Three Women And Counting

Donna Strickland is the first woman to win the prize in a generation. Other women in physics are not surprised, but some hope change may be coming.

Donna Strickland seemed genuinely surprised to learn that she was only the third woman to ever win the Nobel Prize in physics.

"Is that all, really?" a flummoxed Strickland asked during a press conference announcing the prize. "I thought there might have been more."

But there haven't been. Only the famous scientist and , a nuclear physicist, have won the prize. Curie won in 1903 for her discovery of radioactivity, and Goeppert Mayer in 1963 for theoretical work on the structure of the atomic

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