Canadian scientist Donna Strickland has won the Nobel Prize in physics She's ended a 55-year drought for female physicists She shares the prize with Gerard Mourou of France, and American Arthur Ashkin Strickland and Mourou helped develop laser pulses that are critical in corrective eye surgery The academy said their 1985 article on the technique was "revolutionary" Waterloo professor Strickland is only the third woman to have ever won the prize Donna Strickland Other Canadians who have won Nobel Prizes include Frederick G. Banting, for discovering insulin And writer Alice Munro, for being the "master of the contemporary short story"