Arthur Ashkin: Father of the optical tweezers

Abstract

The father of the optical tweezers, Arthur Ashkin, passed away peacefully at his home in Rumson, NJ, on September 21, 2020, at the age of 98, two years after being awarded the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize. Arthur Ashkin, in his backyard, looking through a magnifying glass. Image credit: Daniel Ashkin (photographer). From right to left: Arthur Ashkin, Steven Chu, and John Bjorkholm in 1986, around the time of the first demonstration of atom trapping. Reused with permission of Nokia Corporation and AT&T Archives. Arthur Ashkin in his homemade laboratory in his basement in November 2018. Arthur Ashkin was born in Brooklyn, NY, on September 2, 1922, the son of humble eastern European Jewish immigrants. Arthur’s father, Isador, was an orphan from Odessa, then part of Russia, while his mother, Anna, was from the province of Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Isador immigrated to the United States in 1910, shortly before his nineteenth birthday. Upon his arrival at Ellis Island, his surname, Ashkenasy, was Americanized to Ashkin. Having trained as a dental technician in the orphanage where he was raised, Isador established his own dental laboratory on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, specializing in dental prostheses. Anna, who worked briefly as a secretary in Red Hook, Brooklyn, became a homemaker, raising Arthur and his siblings in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Arthur had three siblings, a younger sister, Ruth, an elder brother, Julius, and the first-born, Gertrude, who died at a young age. Ruth studied Greek and Latin at The City College of New York and became an esteemed teacher in the New York City elementary school system. Julius became a physicist. He was an exceptionally gifted student who graduated early and became a close collaborator with many leading physicists of the time, including Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, and Hans Bethe. … [↵][1]1Email: rene.essiambre{at}nokia-bell-labs.com. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1