Michel Mayor

Prof. Michel Mayor is Emeritus Professor at Geneva University, who was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics as being the first person, together with his student Didier Queloz, to find a planet orbiting a Sun-like star outside of our solar system. Until recently the solar system has provided us with the only basis for our knowledge of planets and life in the Universe. In 1995 Professors Mayor and Queloz have dramatically changed this view with the discovery of the first giant planet outside the solar system. This seminal discovery and the development of new astronomical equipment and observational approaches has spawned a revolution in astronomy both in terms of new instrumentation and understanding of planet formation and evolution, and ever more than two decades after this discovery thousands of extra-solar planets have become known. In the future Professor’s Mayor research is expected to bring the discovery of a “second Earth”, a habitable planet with the potential to support life.