In a special ceremony in Paris last month, cosmetics giant L’Oréal and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recognized five women, one from each continent, with the L’Oréal–UNESCO for Women in Science Awards. This year’s recipients are Zohra Ben Lakhdar, Belita Koiller, Dominique Langevin, Myriam P. Sarachik, and Fumiko Yonezawa. The awards, which alternate each year between the life sciences and materials science (including physics and chemistry), are each accompanied by a cash prize of $100 000. This year’s presentation in materials science appropriately coincides with the World Year of Physics 2005.
Ben Lakhdar, the laureate for Africa, is a professor of physics at the University of Tunis in Tunisia. She is being honored “for her experiments and models on infrared spectroscopy and its applications to pollution detection and medicine,” according to the citation. She “has greatly furthered the development of optics and photonics as a...
