Michel Mayor | |
---|---|
Born | Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor 12 January 1942 Lausanne, Switzerland |
Education | University of Lausanne (MS) University of Geneva (PhD) |
Known for | Discovered first planet orbiting around a normal star, 51 Pegasi |
Awards | Prix Jules Janssen (1998) Albert Einstein Medal(2004)[1] Shaw Prize (2005) Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (2015) Wolf Prize (2017) Nobel Prize in Physics (2019) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astrophysics |
Institutions | University of Geneva |
Thesis | "The kinematical properties of stars in the solar vicinity: possible relation with the galactic spiral structure" (1971) |
Doctoral students | Didier Queloz |
Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl majɔʁ]; born 12 January 1942)[2] is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy.[3] He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva. He is co-laureate of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Jim Peebles and Didier Queloz,[4] and the winner of the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize[5] and the 2015 Kyoto Prize.
Together with Didier Queloz in 1995, he discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi.[6] For this achievement, they were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star"[7] resulting in "contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos".[8] Related to the discovery, Mayor noted that humans will never migrate to such exoplanets since they are "much, much too far away ... [and would take] hundreds of millions of days using the means we have available today".[9] However, due to discoveries by Mayor, searching for extraterrestrial communications from exoplanets may now be a more practical consideration than thought earlier.[10]
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