Agostini, Krausz and L'Huillier Win 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics

The award is the second of the season after the Medicine Prize went to mRNA researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
The award is the second of the season after the Medicine Prize went to mRNA researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
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Agostini, Krausz and L'Huillier Win 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics

The award is the second of the season after the Medicine Prize went to mRNA researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
The award is the second of the season after the Medicine Prize went to mRNA researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP

Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for "experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter", the award-giving body said on Tuesday. 

The prize, which was raised this year to 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million), is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 

Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week after Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and US colleague Drew Weissman won the medicine prize for making mRNA molecule discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines. 

Created in the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace have been awarded since 1901 with a few interruptions, becoming the arguably highest honor for scientists everywhere. 

While the sometimes controversial award for peace can hog the limelight, the physics prize has likewise often taken center stage with winners such as Albert Einstein and awards for science that has fundamentally changed how we see the world. 

Last year, Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the prize for work on quantum entanglement, where two particles are linked regardless of the space between them, something that unsettled Einstein himself who once referred to it as "spooky action at a distance". 

Announced on consecutive weekdays in early October, the physics prize announcement will be followed by ones for chemistry, literature, peace and economics, the latter a later addition to the original line-up. 



Chopin Waltz Unearthed after 200 Years

The birthplace of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, May 7, 2010 in Wola, near Warsaw. (AFP)
The birthplace of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, May 7, 2010 in Wola, near Warsaw. (AFP)
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Chopin Waltz Unearthed after 200 Years

The birthplace of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, May 7, 2010 in Wola, near Warsaw. (AFP)
The birthplace of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, May 7, 2010 in Wola, near Warsaw. (AFP)

An unknown waltz by Chopin, written nearly 200 years ago, has been discovered in the vault of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.

The score, on a card bearing Frederic Chopin's hand-written name, was found by a curator in the spring, the New York Times reported Sunday.

"I thought, 'What's going on here? What could this be?' I didn't recognize the music," curator Robinson McClellan told the paper.

He was at first unsure that the piece was actually Chopin's after photographing the score and playing it on a keyboard at home.

He conferred with an academic at the University of Pennsylvania who is an expert on Chopin, before the Morgan concluded the find was genuine after testing the ink and paper.

The penmanship was also found to match Chopin's, including the reproduction of a stylized bass clef symbol as well as doodling characteristic of the composer.

"We have total confidence in our conclusion," McClellan said.

The museum believes that the music is from between 1830 and 1835, when Chopin was in his early 20s.

The tune features a stark opening and was described by pianist Lang Lang as containing "dramatic darkness turning into a positive thing."

Chopin, who wrote mostly piano solos, died aged 39 in France in 1849.