Roger Penrose
Facts
© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Fergus Kennedy
Roger Penrose
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
Born: 8 August 1931, Colchester, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
A black hole is a supermassive compact object with a gravitational force so large that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. In 1964, Roger Penrose proposed critical mathematical tools to describe black holes. He showed that Einstein’s general theory of relativity means the formation of black holes must be seen as a natural process in the development of the universe. He was also able to describe black holes in detail: at their farthest depths is a singularity where all known laws of nature dissolve.
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