Michel Mayor

Michel Mayor
Mayor in 2012
Born
Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor

(1942-01-12) 12 January 1942 (age 82)
Lausanne, Switzerland
EducationUniversity of Lausanne (MS)
University of Geneva (PhD)
Known forDiscovered first planet orbiting around a normal star, 51 Pegasi
AwardsPrix Jules Janssen (1998)
Shaw Prize (2005)
Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (2015)
Wolf Prize (2017)
Nobel Prize in Physics (2019)
Scientific career
FieldsAstrophysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Geneva
Thesis"The kinematical properties of stars in the solar vicinity: possible relation with the galactic spiral structure" (1971)
Doctoral studentsDidier Queloz

Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl majɔʁ]; born 12 January 1942)[1] is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy.[2] 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,[3] and the winner of the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize[4] 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.[5] For this achievement, they were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star"[6] resulting in "contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos".[7] 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".[8] However, due to discoveries by Mayor, searching for extraterrestrial communications from exoplanets may now be a more practical consideration than thought earlier.[9]

Mayor holds MS in Physics from the University of Lausanne (1966) and PhD in Astronomy from the Geneva Observatory (1971). He was a researcher at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in 1971. Subsequently, he spent sabbatical semesters at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in northern Chile and at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi System.[10]

  1. ^ "Conference du 26 Septembre 2007" (in French). Cercle des amities internationales, Geneve. September 2007. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference MPC-object was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Chang, Kenneth; Specia, Megan (8 October 2019). "Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Cosmic Discoveries". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 8 October 2019. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  4. ^ "Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize". Vaprize.sci.am. 18 July 2014. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  5. ^ Mayor, Michel; Queloz, Didier (November 1995). "A Jupiter-mass companion to a solar-type star". Nature. 378 (6555): 355–359. Bibcode:1995Natur.378..355M. doi:10.1038/378355a0. S2CID 4339201.
  6. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019". Nobel Media AB. Archived from the original on 10 October 2019. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  7. ^ Wenz, John (10 October 2019). "Lessons from scorching hot weirdo-planets". Knowable Magazine. Annual Reviews. doi:10.1146/knowable-101019-2. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference PHY-20191009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference NBC-20191009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Michel Mayor". The Planetary Society. Archived from the original on 8 August 2019. Retrieved 8 August 2019.

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