Penrose Shares Nobel Physics Prize for Black Hole Research
Penrose Shares Nobel Physics Prize for Black Hole Research
(Bloomberg) -- Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics for their research into the darkest corners of the universe.
Penrose was honored “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Tuesday. He will be sharing the prize with Genzel and Ghez, for their “discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy,” it said.
Penrose, of the University of Oxford, will receive one half of the prize, while Genzel, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the University of California, and Ghez, also of the University of California, will split the other half, the academy said.
Penrose “used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity,” it said. “Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist, these super-heavyweight monsters that capture everything that enters them. Nothing can escape, not even light.”
Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
Last year, the physics prize went to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of Switzerland and James Peebles of Canada for their “contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and earth’s place in the cosmos.”
Previous winners include Peter W. Higgs, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.
The Nobel Foundation announced last month it was increasing the amount awarded for individual prizes to 10 million kronor ($1.1 million), from 9 million kronor previously, to reflect a rise in the returns generated on its capital.
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