Donna Strickland was born in Guelph, Ontario. Her mother was an English teacher and her father an electrical engineer. She was always good at maths and physics, and when choosing her undergraduate course at university she was torn between electrical engineering (‘lots of jobs’) and physics (‘more fun’). Fortunately, she found that it was possible to combine the two, and studied engineering physics at McMaster University, Ontario. The programme included the study of lasers and optoelectronics, which she thought was ‘neat’.
After graduating in 1981, Strickland went to study for a PhD at the University of Rochester, where she investigated how to increase the power of lasers without destroying the amplifying mechanism that increases the power. She and her supervisor, Gérard Mourou, devised an experimental setup that led to a technique known as ‘chirped pulse amplification’, which produced pulses of terawatt intensity. (See the PHYSICS REVIEW December Update, ‘Tools made from laser light’, at www.hoddereducation.co.uk/physicsreviewextras.) Strickland, an experimental physicist, has said that:
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