【直播】诺奖得主邀你探寻系外行星和宇宙生命 | 吉林大学-剑桥大学前沿学术讲坛

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 Professor Queloz 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. Since then Professor Queloz has been involved in a successful series of developments of precise spectrographs, considerably improving the precision of the Doppler technique.

In  2007, in the emerging area of planetary transit detection, he established a successful international collaboration with the WASP team from the UK, providing the spectroscopic confirmation and precise photometry follow-up to confirm and characterize planetary candidates. He also took an active part in the Corot mission, pioneering planet transit detection from space. He conducted a part of the work that led to the first transit detection of a rocky planet (Corot-7b).

In 2012 he received, with Michel Mayor, the 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award of Basic Sciences for developing new astronomical instruments and experimental techniques that led to the first observation of planets outside the Solar System.

In 2013 he became 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 exoplanets in the Universe as well as to promote and share the excitement of this work with the public. With the help of colleagues at the Institute of Astronomy and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, he established the Cambridge Exoplanet Research Group.

In 2019, Professor Queloz jointly won the Nobel Prize for Physics for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star, along with Professor James Peebles and Professor Michel Mayor, and for their pioneering advances in physical cosmology.