Nobel Prize in Physics divided between Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for black hole research

The prize was awarded to the British, German and US scientists for their work on the formation of black holes

The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Americans Harvey Alter, Charles Rice and Briton Michael Houghton for the hepatitis C virus discovery

Reading Time:2 minutes

The winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics are announced during a news conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in Stockholm, on October 6. Photo: AP

Published: 6:14pm, 6 Oct 2020Updated: 10:07pm, 6 Oct 2020

Britain’s Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and US scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.

Penrose, 89, professor at the University of Oxford, won half the prize for his work using mathematics to prove that black holes are a direct consequence of the general theory of relativity.

Genzel, 68, of the Max Planck Institute and University of California, Berkeley, and Ghez, 55, at the University of California, Los Angeles, shared the other half for discovering that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy.

Physics is the second of this year’s crop of Nobels to be awarded, after three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of Hepatitis C on Monday.

Recipients of prizes in the fields of chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week. The economics award is due next week.

Among the Nobel Prizes, physics has often dominated the spotlight with past awards going to scientific superstars such as Albert Einstein for fundamental discoveries about the make-up of the universe, including the general theory of relativity.