Optical Tweezers: A Force to Be Reckoned With.

Cell

Physics Department & LASSP, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. Electronic address:

Published: November 2018

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded jointly to Arthur Ashkin for the discovery and development of optical tweezers and their applications to biological systems and to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for the invention of laser chirped pulse amplification. Here we focus on Arthur Ashkin and how his revolutionary work opened a window into the world of molecular mechanics and spurred the rise of single-molecule biophysics.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.019DOI Listing

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