The audience in Chennai, Southern India, would get the unique opportunity to listen to a Nobel winner discuss his work and the hunt for extraterrestrial life.
The discovery of an extrasolar planet circling a sun-like star earned Swiss astronomer Didier Patrick Queloz the Nobel Prize. On October 20, he will visit the city as part of a lecture series conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M).
Didier Queloz was born in Switzerland and studied at the University of Geneva, where he also received a doctorate in 1995.
In the same year, Queloz and his supervisor Michel Mayor announced the first discovery of a planet outside our solar system, an exoplanet, orbiting a solar-type star in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
They were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for their discovery of the planet ’51 Pegasi b’ in the Pegasus constellation using specially constructed telescopes. Since then, the Milky Way has hosted the discovery of more than 4,000 exoplanets.
Such investigations may eventually provide a response to the enduring query of whether there is extraterrestrial life.
Queloz has been teaching at the University of Geneva since 2008 and the University of Cambridge since 2012.
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