Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez

The Nobel Prize for Physics this year has been awarded to three physicists, including Roger Penrose for black hole discovery and to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.

The Nobel Prize for Physics was announced on Tuesday, 6 October, by the Stockholm-based Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that Briton Roger Penrose will receive half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.”

The academy’s secretary-general, Goran K. Hansson said that German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez will receive the second half of the prize “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”

It is pretty common for several scientists who have worked in related fields to share the prize.

Taking to Twitter, the official account of the Nobel Prize wrote, "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2020 NobelPrize in Physics with one half to Roger Penrose and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez."

The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.1 million), courtesy of a bequest left 124 years ago by the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The amount was increased recently to adjust for inflation.

Earlier on Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine to Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus.

The other Nobel Prizes are for outstanding work in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics.

Unknown facts about Nobel Prize for Physics

Known for his invention of dynamite, Alfred Nobel signed off his fortunes to a series of five prizes in his last will in 1985 that came to be recognised as the Nobel Prizes. The prestigious awards were first given out in 1901.

There have been six years when the Nobel Prize for Physics was not awarded. Those include 1916, 1931, 1934, and 1940 through 1942 because of the prevailing World War-I and II.

With agency inputs