Donna Strickland

"We wondered if it was a prank. But then I knew it was the right day, and it would have been a cruel prank."

"Is that all, really? I thought there might have been more. We need to celebrate women physicists, because we’re out there. Hopefully, in time, it will start to move forward at a faster rate. I’m honoured to be one of those women."

"In high school, I was very good in math and physics. I wasn’t good at much of anything else. Some people are good at a lot of things. I don’t know how they choose what to do. I couldn’t do athletic stuff, I wasn’t artistic, I have no musical ear, and I wasn’t good at writing. So I was pretty narrow in what I could do. I wasn’t thinking, “Can I do science?” I was thinking, “That’s the only thing I can do, so let’s do it.""

"I never applied."

"If somebody else thinks something that you don't believe in, just think they're wrong and you're right and keep going. That's pretty much the way I always think."