The award went to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their studies on massive black holes, like the one in the center of the Milky Way
The Nobel Assembly, meeting at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, announced the winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics 2020. The prestigious medal went to Professors Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez “for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole“. As explained by the commission, the prize is divided in half between Roger Penros and the couple Reinhard Genzel / Andrea Ghez. The winners are awarded the famous medal, plus a cash prize of about one million dollars.
Prof. Roger Penrose has the merit of having predicted with mathematical models the existence of black holes from the theory of General Relativity. The forecasts have given a robust proof of their existence in a historical period where the scientific community considered it pure speculation. Prof. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Gehz have been awarded for their long research on the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The two were able to demonstrate the presence of the mass that has 4.3 million times the mass of the sun and is today called Sagittarius A.
Roger Penrose is English, he obtained his doctorate in 1957 at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a professor at the University of Oxford. Reinhard Genzel, German, received his doctorate in 1978 from the University of Bonn in Germany. He is currently director of the Max PlancK Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Andrea Ghez, American, received her doctorate in 1992 from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
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