13 Facts About Michel Mayor

Michel Mayor formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva.

Michel Mayor is co-laureate of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Jim Peebles and Didier Queloz, and the winner of the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize and the 2015 Kyoto Prize.

Michel Mayor obtained an MS degree in Physics from the University of Lausanne and a PhD in Astronomy from the Geneva Observatory in 1971.

Michel Mayor was a researcher at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in 1971.

From 1971 to 1984, Michel Mayor worked as a research associate at the Observatory of Geneva, which is home to the astronomy department of the University of Geneva.

Michel Mayor became an associate professor at the university in 1984.

Michel Mayor was director of the Observatory of Geneva from 1998 to 2004.

In 2007, Michel Mayor was one of 11 European scientists who discovered Gliese 581c, the first extrasolar planet in a star's habitable zone, from the ESO telescope.

In 1998, Michel Mayor was awarded the Swiss Marcel Benoist Prize in recognition of his work and its significance for human life.

Michel Mayor received the Prix Jules Janssen from the Societe astronomique de France in 1998.

Michel Mayor was made a knight of the French Legion d'Honneur in 2004.

Michel Mayor has received honorary doctorate degrees from eight universities: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2001; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne ; Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, 2006; Uppsala University, 2007; Paris Observatory, 2008; Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2009; University of Provence, 2011, and Universite Joseph Fourier, 2014.

Michel Mayor has received 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 around Sun-like stars.