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Ghez Becomes Latest Techer Nobel Laureate
Jan Nordén, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
On October 6, 2020, Andrea Ghez (PhD ‘92) was named one of four recipients of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Ghez, the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics at UCLA, was recognized for her discovery of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Andrea Ghez's research brings into question some established theories.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Ghez’s research includes studying more than 3,000 stars that orbit the supermassive black hole, leading to her renowned study questioning Einstein’s theory of relativity, which was published in July 2019 by Science magazine.
She shares half of the Nobel Prize with Reinhard Genzel of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Together, they are praised “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”
Even after this incredible accomplishment, Ghez is set on further discovery. “Our understanding of how the universe works is still so incomplete,” she says. “The Nobel Prize is fabulous, but we still have a lot to learn.”
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The first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way
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