Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2018

Arthur Ashkin

Proving It’s Never Too Late To Make History

You don’t need to understand what optic tweezers are or how they have revolutionized contemporary physics to understand the achievement of Nobel Prize winner Arthur Ashkin. Indeed, even Bell Labs, his former employer, eschews the scientific to describe the tweezers as grabbing “particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers.”

The Nobel committee said that his work “revolutionised laser physics” and opened up “multitude of industrial and medical applications.” He also made history because his success, at the age of 96, means he is the oldest person ever to collect a Nobel Prize.

The recognition of Ashkin — whose father changed the family name from Ashkinazi on his way from Odessa — is a hopeful reminder that no matter how long we wait, there’s a chance that we will all receive the appropriate honors for our achievements.

— Dan Friedman

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.