Female Wins Nobel Prize For Physics For The 1st Time In 55 Years

The Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to a woman for the first time in 55 years, just a day after a scientist at Cern was suspended for claiming the discipline was ‘built by men.’

Prof Donna Strickland was one of three who will share the prize, the first female to achieve the accolade since Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963 and only the third woman in history. The first being Marie Curie.

“We need to celebrate women physicists because we’re out there, and hopefully in time it’ll start to move forward at a faster rate,” she said on a phone call to the press conference.

“I’m honoured to be one of those women.”

The announcement that a woman had been awarded the prize for physics comes just a day after Italian scientist Professor Alessandro Strumia was suspended by Cern for saying that "physics was invented and built by men" in a talk.

Cern said it was reassessing its relationship with the researcher and wiped his slides from its website.