Professor Didier Queloz
- Director
- Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy
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Didier Queloz is Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and part-time Professor of Physics at ETH Zurich.
Didier Queloz is Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory and Geneva University. He is at the origin of the exoplanet revolution in astrophysics. Until recently, the Solar System has provided us with the only basis for our knowledge of planets and life in the universe. In 1995 Prof Queloz has dramatically changed this view with the discovery he made with Michel Mayor of the first giant planet outside the solar system. This seminal discovery has spawned a real revolution in astronomy both in terms of new instrumentation and understanding of planet formation and evolution.
Over the next 25 years, Didier Queloz scientific contributions have essentially been to make progress in detection and measurement capabilities of exoplanet systems with the goal to retrieve information on their physical structure to better understand their formation and evolution by comparison with our solar system. More recently he is directing his activity to the detection of Earth like planets and Universal life. In the course of his career he developed astronomical equipment, new observational approaches and detection algorithms. He participated and conducted programs leading to the detection of hundred planets, include breakthrough results. He participated to numerous documentaries movies, articles TV and radio interviews to share excitement and promote interest for science in general and particularly topics
In 2013 he become professor at Cambridge University where he is leading a comprehensive research program with the goal of making further progress in our understanding of their formation, structure, and habitability of exoplanet in the Universe as well as to promote and share the excitement of this work with the public.
For his work he received the 2019 Physics Nobel Prize.