Keen Nobel watchers – myself included – were not altogether surprised by this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. We’d long suspected that a trip to Stockholm could be in store for those who’d developed techniques to create attosecond pulses, which can capture the fleeting movement of electrons in atoms. The big question, though, was who would win, with the 2023 prize eventually going to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier.

Particularly welcome is the recognition for L’Huillier, who becomes only the fifth female physicist to win a Nobel prize after Marie Curie, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Donna Strickland and Andrea Ghez. She pioneered attosecond physics back in the 1980s, shining infrared laser pulses through noble gases to create ultraviolet harmonics, which interfere to make much shorter pulses. Agostini later developed techniques to create trains of pulses, while Krausz worked out how to extract pulses one by one.

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Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier win 2023 Nobel Prize for Physics

However, for anyone who wins a Nobel prize, carrying out the award-winning research is only part of the battle. To be in the running, you have to be proposed by the scientists whom the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences approaches for nominations. That means being influential and well known enough in the community, which in turn means you’ve had to battle for funding, lab space, publications and students. Before then, you’ll have needed support from teachers and tutors all the way back to school level.

Those are hurdles faced by all physicists, of course, but they’re often higher and tougher for women. That’s why it’s important that the nominations process for prizes is as thorough and open as possible so that the right candidates – not just those with the right connections – succeed. The Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World, has already done that with its own prizes, which are now advertised in a greater number of venues and allow people to nominate themselves.

The same is true even in the seemingly murky world of national public-honours systems, which in the UK is organized through 10 independent honours panels, including one in science, technology and research. The atomic physicist Keith Burnett, who is the incoming president of the Institute of Physics, sits on the science panel, which recently held an in-person and online event outlining how the UK honours system works, how people can nominate, and what the benefits are.

The message is clear: unless the right people are nominated for prizes and awards, the right people won’t win.