Nobel Prize-winning physicist to donate prize money to Ukraine
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This year's Nobel laureate in physics, Ferenc Krausz, a Hungarian-born scientist working in Germany, has decided to donate his prize money to support Ukrainians affected by the war, Krausz announced in a brief interview with German Deutschlandfunk radio on Oct. 3, shortly after learning of his win.
Krausz, 61, along with Pierre Agostini (Ohio University) and Anne L'Huillier (Lund University) won the Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments with extremely short pulses of light, measured in attoseconds, that can be used to capture and study rapid processes inside atoms.
One attosecond is a quintillionth of a second – it is to a second what one second is to the age of the Universe. This work demonstrated that these almost unimaginably short pulses – like an ultra high-speed shutter – could be used to study how electron particles behave inside atoms.
The development is likely to lead to even more accurate electron microscopes, much faster electronics and new tests able to diagnose diseases at a much earlier stage.
Born and educated in Hungary, Krausz now works in Germany. Since 2003, he has directed the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, a suburb of Munich. He is also head of the attosecond physics department.
Krausz plans to donate his Nobel Prize money of about $1 million (SEK 11 million) to the Science4People initiative which he founded in 2022 after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Science4People is an international initiative of scientists and those aware of the role of science and innovation for the future of our civilization. From which this future will grow is education, which is severely impaired in conflict-torn countries.
Within Ukraine, the initiative works hand in hand with local communities to identify and address local projects. In addition to improving living conditions and caring for those in need, Science4People focuses on education, learning and sports for school children.
Among the projects already implemented by Science4People in Ukraine is the construction of new infrastructure for a primary school in the village of Bakosh in the Western Zakarpattia Oblast, which now educates more than 300 students.
The Science4People initiative also launched the SKOLA+ project in Oct., which aims to help students at two rural schools in Zakarpattia Oblast "overcome educational gaps caused by war and the COVID-19 pandemic" through modern teaching methods and programs, as well as a series of free lessons.
About 100 students of different ages and 12 teachers have already registered for this project. The first phase of SKOLA+ will run until December, and the second phase, which will include at least one additional school, will begin in February 2024 and continue until May.
Krausz has already directed the financial portion of other recent awards he received to support this Ukrainian initiative and plans to do the same with his Nobel Prize, the Hungarian Portfolio reported.
In his open letter on https://www.science4people.org/, Krausz calls for solidarity among universities worldwide to provide free access to their online courses for Ukrainian people and children. He has also managed to attract at least three other Nobel laureates from previous years as benefactors of his project.
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