2019 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 8 October 2019.

The citation

Half of the prize goes to James Peebles "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology". Half of the prize goes jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star".

The laureates

James Peebles was born in 1935 in Winnipeg, Canada, and is affiliated with Princeton University, Princeton. Michel Mayor was born in 1942 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is affiliated with the University of Geneva, Geneva. Didier Queloz was born in 1966 in Geneva, Switzerland, and is affiliated with the University of Geneva, Geneva and the University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

Why it matters

Peebles developed the theories that explain how the universe evolved after the Big Bang. Mayor and Queloz discovered the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995, starting a search that has since found thousands.

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.