ASTRONOMER

Michel Mayor

1942 - Today

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Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl majɔʁ]; born 12 January 1942) is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva. He 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. Together with Didier Queloz in 1995, he discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Michel Mayor is the 47th most popular astronomer (down from 35th in 2019), the 61st most popular biography from Switzerland (down from 58th in 2019) and the most popular Swiss Astronomer.

Michel Mayor is most famous for being the first astronomer to discover a planet outside of our solar system.

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Among ASTRONOMERS

Among astronomers, Michel Mayor ranks 47 out of 644. Before him are Asaph Hall, Johann Bayer, Clyde Tombaugh, Martin Ryle, Wilhelm Schickard, and Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve. After him are Arthur Eddington, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, John Michell, Jérôme Lalande, Adolphe Quetelet, and Édouard Stephan.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1942, Michel Mayor ranks 46. Before him are Werner Herzog, David Bradley, Giorgio Agamben, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Jacques Rogge, and Martin Rees. After him are Jochen Rindt, Lou Reed, Giacinto Facchetti, Alassane Ouattara, Giancarlo Giannini, and Sixto Rodriguez.

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In Switzerland

Among people born in Switzerland, Michel Mayor ranks 61 out of 1,015. Before him are Walter Rudolf Hess (1881), Angelica Kauffman (1741), Richard R. Ernst (1933), Henry Fuseli (1741), Hermann Rorschach (1884), and Auguste Piccard (1884). After him are Johannes Itten (1888), Kurt Wüthrich (1938), Werner Arber (1929), Hans Küng (1928), Ferdinand Hodler (1853), and Gabriel Cramer (1704).

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Among ASTRONOMERS In Switzerland

Among astronomers born in Switzerland, Michel Mayor ranks 1. After him are Jean Philippe Loys de Cheseaux (1718), Didier Queloz (1966), Paul Wild (1925), Rudolf Wolf (1816), Johann III Bernoulli (1744), Robert Emden (1862), Robert Julius Trumpler (1886), and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664).

Swiss born Astronomers

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