More women will win Nobel prizes in the science disciplines in future as their numbers in labs and research teams grow, 2023 physics prize laureate Anne L'Huillier told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday.
Her comments came as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to three U.S.-based men for their work on quantum mechanical tunnelling.
"It's changing, there will be more and more women winning the Nobel physics and chemistry prizes. I'm totally convinced," the French-Swedish researcher said on the sidelines of a conference in Copenhagen.
"For the Nobels, (the Academy) looks at work that was done about 30 years ago so it will all take time," she stressed.
L'Huillier won the Nobel in 2023 with France's Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-Austrian Ferenc Krausz for research using ultra quick light flashes that enable the study of electrons inside atoms and molecules.
That year was a bumper year for women, who won four Nobel prizes.
L'Huillier is only the fifth woman to win the physics prize since it was first awarded in 1901, out of a total of 230 physics laureates.
For the chemistry prize, only eight women have won, out of a total of 197 recipients.
Notably, Marie Curie remains the only individual to have won prizes in two different science disciplines, winning the physics prize in 1903 and the chemistry prize in 1911.
"What is important, what really counts, is the discovery of course, the excellence," L'Huillier said.
"But I think it's clear that at the Academy, there is a kind of pressure to reward women."
She said women were historically "less visible" in science, but mentalities were also slowly changing, noting that there have been three women physics laureates since 2018.
"That reflects what is going on, that there are more women doing research," she said.
Around 30% of the people working in her lab in the southern Swedish city of Lund were women, she said.
L'Huillier said she was proud to be the fifth woman to win the physics prize.
"But at the same time, it comes with a lot of responsibilities, probably even more than for my male colleagues, to speak to young people and try to inspire a new generation."
