8th October, 2019
Nobel Prize in Physics for 2019 has been awarded to three scientists, James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz.
According to Nobel Prize Committee, one half of the Prize will go to James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and the other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.”
“The discovery by 2019 #NobelPrize laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz started a revolution in astronomy and over 4,000 exoplanets have since been found in the Milky Way. Strange new worlds are still being discovered, with an incredible wealth of sizes, forms and orbits”, the Swedish Academy of Sciences tweeted.
“This year’s Physics Laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz have explored our home galaxy, the Milky Way, looking for unknown worlds. In 1995, they made the first discovery of a planet outside our solar system, an exoplanet, orbiting a solar-type star, 51 Pegasi”.
Phillip James Edwin Peebles, who is 84 years old, is a Canadian-American physicist and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science at Princeton University.
According to a post on Wikipedia, Peebles is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation. His three textbooks (Physical Cosmology, 1971; Large Scale Structure of the Universe, 1980; Principles of Physical Cosmology, 1993) have been standard references in the field.
Michel G.E. Mayor, 77, is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva’s Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva.
The youngest of the three winners, Didier Queloz is a Swiss astronomer with a prolific record in finding extrasolar planets in the Astrophysics Group of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and also at the University of Geneva. He was born on 23 F4ebruary 1966.