Optical Tweezers: A Force to Be Reckoned With

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded jointly to Arthur Ashkin for the discovery and development of optical tweezers and their applications to biological systems and to Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland for the invention of laser chirped pulse amplification. Here we focus on Arthur Ashkin and how his revolutionary work opened a window into the world of molecular mechanics and spurred the rise of single-molecule biophysics.