scientists arthur ashkan and the other half to a team of two physicists the frenchman gerard maule roo and canadian donna strickland the three were honored for their research in the field of laser physics . and derek williams joins us here in the studio to tell us a little bit more about the nobel committee's decision and why exactly they've received this prize tell us a little bit more about laser physics and what they've accomplished these are two fairly widely divergent fields but what they do have in common is laser physics ashton's work involved what are called optical tweezers so they allowed us on a micro he created a tool that allowed us on a microscopic level to to push around things like bacteria and viruses without actually killing them before them we had to actually kill them and fix them place in order to observe them so it allowed us to begin to observing these living systems which obviously had huge ramifications for fields like biology. on on the other hand the work done by more rw and and by strickland is it's about high intensity compact laser system so when you're cr