Three scientists share Nobel Prize for Physics

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work in understanding how the universe has evolved.

Swiss Astronomers Michel Mayor, right, and Didier Queloz, left, at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Geneva in 2005. Picture: AP

Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz on Tuesday night won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics for revealing the wonder of the evolution of the universe and discovering planets orbiting distant suns.

Peebles, of Princeton University in the US, was awarded half of the 9 million Swedish kronor ($1.35m) prize while Mayor and Queloz, from Switzerland’s University of Geneva and Britain’s Cambridge University, shared the rest. “This year’s Nobel laureates have painted a picture of our universe far stranger and more wonderful than we could ever have imagined,” Ulf Danielsson, a professor and member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said at the announcement.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the scientists’ research had “transformed our ideas about the cosmos”.

Mayor and Queloz said it was “simply extraordinary” to be awarded a Nobel for what they described as “the most exciting discovery of our entire career” when they discovered a planet outside our solar system, known as an “exoplanet”. Peebles, who was able to interpret trace radiation from the infancy of the universe, said his advice to young people wanting to go into science would be not to be lured by the prospect of such prizes.

“The awards and prizes, well, they are charming and very much appreciated but ... you should enter science because you are fascinated by it. That’s what I did,” he told reporters by phone.

Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week. William Kaelin, Gregg Semenza and Peter Ratcliffe shared the medicine prize on Monday.

Among the Nobels, physics has often taken centre stage with winners featuring some of the greatest names in science such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Niels Bohr, as well as ground-breaking inventors such as radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry will be announced on Wednesday, two literature prizes on Thursday and the peace prize on Friday.

This year, two literature prizes will be handed out because the one last year was suspended after a scandal rocked the Swedish academy.

This was the 113th Nobel Prize in Physics awarded since 1901, of which 47 awards have been given to a single laureate. Only three women have won it: Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018, according to the Nobel website.

Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite, decided the physics, chemistry, medicine and literature prizes should be awarded in Stockholm, and the peace prize in Oslo.

Reuters, AP