Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for research increasing our understanding of our place in the universe, the jury said.
Mr Peebles won one-half of the prize "for theoretical discoveries that have contributed to our understanding of how the universe evolved after the Big Bang," professor Goran Hansson, secretary-general of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told a press conference.
Goran K. Hansson (C), Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and academy members Mats Larsson (L) and Ulf Danielsson, announce winners. Source: TT News Agency
Mr Mayor and Mr Queloz shared the other half for the first discovery, in October 1995, of a planet outside our solar system - an exoplanet - orbiting a solar-type star in the Milky Way.
"Their discoveries have forever changed our conceptions of the world," the jury said.
Mr Peebles is Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University in the United States, while Mr Mayor and Mr Queloz are both professors at the University of Geneva.
Mr Queloz also works at the University of Cambridge in Britain.
Swiss astrophysicist Didier Queloz. Source: Keystone
The Swiss pair hailed their win as "simply extraordinary".
The prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and the sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about $914,000 or 833,000 euros).
The trio will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.
