4 Nobel Laureates Join South Korea’s Top Science Academy

The Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) has elected four foreign women scientists as new members and says it will expand international exchanges and networks.KAST announced on the 19th that, at its second extraordinary board meeting, it admitted Anne L’Huillier, a professor at Lund University in Sweden; Donna Strickland, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada; May‑Britt Moser, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Françoise Barré‑Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute in France as foreign members.The academy selects distinguished foreign scholars as foreign members up to a cap of 100 people, which represents 20% of its full membership. Currently, 59 leading scholars serve as foreign members, including 34 Nobel and Fields Prize laureates.Anne L’Huillier, newly elected, is a pioneer in attosecond physics and received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. Attosecond physics employs attosecond‑pulse lasers—pulses on the order of 10^‑18 seconds—to observe electron motion inside atoms and molecules. Donna Strickland contributed to the development of high‑intensity, ultrashort‑pulse laser techniques and won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for her work on chirped pulse amplification (CPA). May‑Britt Moser received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of grid cells that help form the brain’s positioning system, and Françoise Barré‑Sinoussi was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her role in identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).With these appointments, the number of female foreign members at KAST rises to seven. The academy said it will leverage the selections to broaden its network of women scientists and to strengthen international academic cooperation.“Adding female scholars from Sweden, Norway and France to what had been a U.S.‑ and male‑centered network of foreign members and Nobel laureates expands the scope of our global academic exchange and enhances diversity,” said Jeong Jin‑ho, president of the academy. He added that KAST plans to pursue substantive exchange and participation programs so that foreign membership is not merely honorary. {vi[numeric value]}) {vi[numeric value]})