Longtime W.M. Keck Observatory astronomer Andrea Ghez has won the Nobel Prize in physics for research proving the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
According to the observatory, Ghez has been studying the galactic center using the Keck Observatory on Maunakea for more than two decades.
The Nobel Prize committee made the announcement early this morning.
The 2020 award was divided, with one half awarded to Roger Penrose for “the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” and the other half jointly awarded to Ghez and Reinhard Genzel, “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”
Ghez, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group, is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics.