The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez on Tuesday for their discoveries that have bettered understanding of the universe, including work on black holes.
Dr. Penrose was awarded half the prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” the committee said.
The second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy,” the committee said.
The Nobel Assembly announced the prize at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Who are the winners?
Dr. Penrose, a Briton who is a professor at the University of Oxford, England, used “ingenious mathematical methods,” the academy said, to prove that black holes were a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, even though Einstein himself did not believe that they existed.
Dr. Genzel, who was born in Germany, and Dr. Ghez, who was born in New York, lead a group of astronomers that focused on a region called Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy. By using the world’s largest telescopes, the academy said, the scientists had developed methods to see through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the center of the Milky Way.
Dr. Genzel works at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Ghez is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Who won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics?
The cosmologist James Peebles split the prize with two astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, for work the Nobel judges said “transformed our ideas about the cosmos.”
Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Reflect on Nearly Sleeping Through the Life-Changing Call
How eight winners got the word.
Who else won a Nobel Prize this year?
Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday received the prize for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus. The Nobel committee said the three scientists had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”
When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced on Wednesday in Sweden. Read about last year’s winners, John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino.
The Nobel Prizes in Literature will be announced on Thursday in Sweden. The prizes for both 2018 and 2019 were announced last year after a postponement of the 2018 prize. That occurred after the husband of an academy member was accused, and ultimately convicted, of rape — a crisis that led to the departure of several board members and required the intervention of the King of Sweden.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday in Norway. Read about last year’s winner, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science will be announced Monday next week in Sweden. Read about last year’s winners, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.
Source: Read Full Article