2017 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 3 October 2017.

The citation

The citation reads: "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

The laureates

Rainer Weiss was born in 1932 in Berlin, Germany, and is affiliated with LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. Barry C. Barish was born in 1936 in Omaha, the United States, and is affiliated with LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena. Kip S. Thorne was born in 1940 in Logan, the United States, and is affiliated with LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena.

Why it matters

The LIGO detectors in the United States made the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015, ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein a century ago. Scientists from the University of Birmingham were among those who worked on the discovery.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.