史上第3位诺贝尔物理奖女性获奖演讲

　　Your Majesties¹, Your Royal Highnesses, Your excellencies

　　尊敬的陛下 诸位位殿下及阁下

　　Dear laureates

　　亲爱的各位获奖者

　　Ladies and gentlemen

　　女士们 先生们

　　It is my honor to represent the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018

　　我很荣幸能够代表2018年诺贝尔物理学奖的得主们来发表演讲

　　and speak on behalf of Arthur Ashkin and Gerard Mourou

　　他们是我最尊敬的同事 阿瑟·阿什金和热拉尔·穆鲁

　　my esteemed² colleagues with whom I share the prize

　　我和他们共同分享这一奖项

　　Arthur Ashkin can one-half of it this year

　　阿瑟·阿什金获得了今年物理学奖金的一半

　　and so he should be the one giving this speech

　　所以他才是应该来发表这个演讲的人

　　Unfortunately he could not join us for this incredible celebration

　　但遗憾的是 他无法参加这场激动人心的庆祝活动

　　Gerard and I want to add our congratulations to Arthur for his remarkable³ invention of laser tweezers⁴

　　热拉尔和我想对阿瑟的卓越发明 即激光镊子 表示热烈的祝贺

　　that can trap living cells and wind up molecular⁵ motors

　　它的作用是捕获活细胞 并使分子马达运转起来

　　We wish Arthur could be here

　　我们都很希望今天阿瑟能在现场

　　As has been pointed⁶ out I joined Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer

　　如所指出的那样 我是居里夫人和玛丽亚·格佩特-梅耶之后

　　as the only women to win this prize

　　第三个获得诺贝尔物理学奖的女性

　　I am humbled⁷ to be in their company

　　能够加入她们的队列中实在是受宠若惊

　　Marie Curie is in a class all her own as the first female winner

　　居里夫人是独树一帜的 她是有史以来第一位女性获奖者

　　and still the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different science categories

　　也是迄今为止唯一一个在两个不同的科学领域都获得过诺贝尔奖的人

　　An astounding⁸ scientist

　　她是一位令人所有人震惊的科学家

　　For her PhD Maria Goeppert-Mayer absolutely--

　　玛丽亚·格佩特-梅耶在她的博士生涯中--

　　Maria Goeppert-Mayer a theoretical physicist⁹ came up with the idea of multi photon physics

　　玛丽亚是位理论物理学家 她提出了多光子物理学的概念

　　that means an atom absorbs two or more photons simultaneously¹⁰

　　意思是一个原子可以同时吸收两个或更多的光子

　　She made the prediction without any experimental evidence

　　她在没有任何实验证据的情况下做出了这个预测

　　and in fact it would be another 30 years before I didn't want to observe the effect

　　事实上 再过30年我就不想观察这个效果了

　　I cited her theory in my PhD thesis more than fifty years later

　　在她获奖的50多年后 我在自己的博士论文中引用了她的理论

　　And as for me

　　至于我个人的经历

　　When I was in grad school working on the project for which Gerard and I are being honored

　　当我还在研究院和热拉尔一起 进行着我们都很自豪的项目时

　　Cyndi Lauper had a big hit

　　那个时候 辛迪·劳帕大受欢迎

　　"Girls just want to have fun"

　　她说过一句话 “女孩子们只想要玩得开心”

　　but they wanted to wait until the working day is done

　　但她们想等到工作日结束后才去享受狂欢

　　but I want to have fun while I'm working

　　我不一样 我想在工作的时候就从中感受到乐趣

　　Now not everyone thinks physics is fun

　　如今不是所有人都认为 物理是有趣的

　　but I do

　　但我确实认为它很有趣

　　I think experimental physics is especially fun

　　特别是实验物理学

　　because not only do you get to solve puzzles about the universe or here on earth

　　因为你不仅能解开遥远的宇宙或是近在咫尺的地球上的谜团

　　There are really cool toys in the lab

　　还能使用实验室里那些超级酷炫的玩具

　　In my case I get to play with high intensity¹¹ lasers that can do magical things

　　以我自己为例 我可以玩高强度激光 这种激光能实现很神奇的事情

　　like take one color of laser light and turn it into a rainbow of colors

　　比如我们可以取一种颜色的激光 然后把它变成彩虹的颜色

　　Just one of the amazing things we get to see in our laser labs

　　这只是我们在激光实验室里能看到的令人惊叹的事情之一

　　Gerard Mourou, who was my PhD supervisor¹²

　　热拉尔·穆鲁是我的博士生导师

　　dreamed up the idea of increasing laser intensity by orders of magnitude

　　他提出了将激光强度提高几个数量级的主意

　　He did it while he was on a ski trip with his family

　　他是在和家人去滑雪旅行的时候 想出这个点子的

　　He probably shouldn't have been thinking about lasers

　　他不应该在那种时候还想着激光

　　He just couldn't help himself

　　但他就是忍不住

　　It was my job to take sure our beautiful idea and make it a reality

　　我的工作是确保我们美好的想法能够成为现实

　　I built a pulse stretcher, then a laser amplifier

　　为此我做了一个脉冲拉伸器 然后是激光放大器

　　and then finally a pulse compressor

　　最终 我做出了一个脉冲压缩机

　　To do so, I had to learn to cleave¹³ optical fiber¹⁴, machine, a lot of parts, do a lot of plumbing¹⁵

　　为此 我必须学会如何切割光纤 机器及其零件 做很多的管道工作

　　Are you feeling the fun?

　　你们能感受到这其中的乐趣吗?

　　I had to measure the pulse durations and the frequency spectrum

　　我必须测量脉冲的持续时间和频谱

　　Not all of the measurements show what we expected

　　不是所有的测量结果都是我们期望所得到的

　　We had to figure out the problems and then away around them

　　我们需要找出这其中的问题 然后避免再次出现同样的错误

　　That was the fun part

　　而这就是最有趣的部分

　　That all took about a year then it was finally time to measure the duration of the compressed amplified pulses

　　花了大约一年的时间 我们才终于能去测量压缩放大脉冲的持续时间

　　and I had no way to measure it

　　但我找不到办法去测量它

　　Steve Williamson my colleague had the way

　　我的同事史蒂夫·威廉姆森找到了方法

　　and he wheeled history camera into my lab one night

　　一天晚上 他把成像仪推进了我的实验室

　　and together we measured the compressed pulse width of the amplified pulses

　　我们一起测量了放大脉冲的压缩脉冲宽度

　　I will never forget that night

　　我永远都忘不了那个夜晚

　　It is truly an amazing feeling when you know that you have built something that no one else ever has

　　当你知道你做出了别人从未实现的东西时 那种感觉真的超级棒

　　and it actually works

　　并且它真的成功了

　　There really is no excitement quite like it

　　我想再也没有哪个时刻比它更令我感到激动了

　　except for maybe getting woken up at 5:00 in the morning

　　当然 除了早上5点被吵醒

　　because the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also thinks

　　然后瑞典皇家科学院通知我得奖了的那一刻

　　it was an exciting moment for the field of laser physics

　　他们也认为 对于激光物理学来说 这的确是个激动人心的时刻

　　So on behalf of Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Mourou and me

　　所以在此我代表 阿瑟·阿什金 热拉尔·穆鲁和我自己

　　Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel foundation

　　感谢瑞典皇家科学院和诺贝尔基金会

　　for honoring us and laser physics with this Nobel Prize

　　感谢你们授予我们和激光物理学科这个诺贝尔奖