French scientist Pierre Agostini, 82, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics, tells AFP that he "regrets" having been forced to retire in France at the age of 61, when he was "still full of energy". He ended up continuing his work in the United States, where he was able to carry out "ultrafast research", explains the specialist in attosecond physics, a tiny fraction of a second. "At the time, there was a lot of talk about these attoseconds, about this discovery, because it was the first. But we never thought about the Nobel Prize," confesses the scientist, who shared the prize with the French-Swedish Anne L'Huillier and the Austro-Hungarian Ferenc Krausz for their research on light flashes, which led to an understanding of the ultrafast movements of electrons in atoms and molecules. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES