Black Hole Scientists Win Nobel Prize in Physics

Half the award goes to Roger Penrose, with the rest split between Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, for work revealing the “darkest secrets of the universe”

Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel  and Andrea Ghez. Credit: Ill. Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists for their work on black holes. British cosmologist Roger Penrose will receive half of the prize, with the remaining half split between German astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel and American astrophysicist Andrea Ghez. Ghez is only the fourth woman in history to receive the venerable physics prize.

“This year’s prize is about the darkest secrets of the universe,” said Göran K. Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, at a press event. The academy recognized Penrose for his “discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” Hansson added, while Ghez and Genzel were awarded “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”