Arthur Ashkin

Bell Laboratories / Lucent Technologies

Arthur Ashkin is an American physicist who spent his career at Bell Laboratories, where he pioneered the field of optical trapping. His invention of optical tweezers — which use focused laser beams to hold and manipulate microscopic particles, atoms, viruses, and living cells without damaging them — transformed experimental biology and soft matter physics. Ashkin demonstrated that radiation pressure from laser light could accelerate, decelerate, and trap neutral particles, opening a suite of non-contact manipulation techniques. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, shared with Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland, for these groundbreaking optical methods. His optical tweezers have become indispensable tools in biophysics laboratories worldwide, enabling single-molecule force measurements, studies of molecular motors, and manipulation of individual DNA strands. Ashkin's work has direct commercial applications in biotechnology, drug discovery, and microfluidics, and he remained active in research well into his nineties.