Arthur Ashkin is oldest Nobel laureate ever

2 October 2018, 2:57 pm

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STOCKHOLM — American Arthur Ashkin, one of the winners of the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday, is the oldest person ever named as a laureate for any of the prestigious awards.

At age 96, Ashkin, affiliated with Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, is six years older than Leonid Hurwicz was when he won the economics prize in 2007. The economics winner in 2012, Lloyd Shapley, was 89.

But the economics prize was not part of the awards established by industrialist Alfred Nobel’s will; it was later established by Sweden’s central bank in Nobel’s honor.

The oldest winners of the prizes established by the will were 88 — Doris Lessing for literature and Raymond Davis for physics.

— AP