ESA congratulates 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who have been awarded the prestigious prize for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star, and James Peebles, honoured for the theoretical framework of cosmology used to investigate the Universe on its largest scales.

The two halves of this year’s award recognise groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of how the Universe formed and evolved, as well as the role of Earth – and of us, as humans – in the overall cosmic picture. Cosmology and exoplanets are among the key themes investigated by ESA’s space science missions.

“We are delighted with the Nobel committee’s recognition of these two major milestones in astronomy,” says Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science.

“From the seeds of cosmic structure, generated almost fourteen billion years ago, to the building blocks of planets and even life, the work of Peebles, Mayor and Queloz tackles some of the most profound questions that humanity has ever pondered: where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?

“These fascinating questions inspire and underpin our daily scientific work at ESA, from cosmology missions like Planck and Euclid to our future fleet of exoplanet satellites, including the upcoming Cheops mission that will soon characterise many alien worlds.”

Exoplanet pioneers

Michel Mayor is an emeritus professor at the University of Geneva, and Didier Queloz is a professor at the University of Geneva and the University of Cambridge.

In the early 1990s, when Queloz was Mayor’s PhD student, they were using the Haute-Provence Observatory in southern France to search for subtle changes in the light coming from nearby stars in a quest for signatures of planets beyond the Solar System. These pioneering observations eventually revealed 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet found around a star like our Sun.

Announced just 24 years ago this month during an astronomy conference in Florence, the discovery of Mayor and Queloz has forever changed our perspective on the cosmos. Revealing a planet that was unlike anything seen in our Solar System, the finding shook our theoretical understanding of planetary formation and inaugurated a flurry of investigations in the burgeoning field of exoplanets.