Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany & Andrea Ghez of the US won the Nobel Physics Prize on October 6 for their research into black holes, the Nobel jury said. The physicists were selected "for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole," the Nobel Committee said. Penrose, 89, was honoured for showing "that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes". Genzel, 68, and Ghez, 55, were jointly awarded for discovering "that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy," the jury said. Ghez is just the fourth woman to receive the physics prize since 1901 when the first Nobel prizes were handed out. The term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. Meanwhile, two Americans and a British scientist were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on October 5 for their contribution in identifying the Hepatitis C virus, which causes cirrhosis & liver cancer. Announcing the prize in Stockholm, the Nobel Committee said that that the work of Harvey Alter, Charles Rice, and Michael Houghton has helped explain a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that couldn’t be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses. The winners would normally receive their prize at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament. But the in-person ceremony has been cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, replaced with a televised ceremony showing the laureates receiving their awards in their home countries.
