The University of Freiburg congratulates alumnus on winning the Nobel Prize

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich, has received the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research on black holes. It is the highest scientific distinction for an alumnus from the University of Freiburg.

“We congratulate our alumnus Reinhard Genzel on winning the Nobel Prize in Physics,” says Prof. Dr. Kerstin Krieglstein, Rector at the University of Freiburg. “With his groundbreaking findings in astrophysics, he is making a major contribution to answering fundamental questions about our universe. As a student, he started to lay the foundation for his outstanding scientific career with us. We would be very pleased to welcome him for a lecture at his alma mater soon.” A total of 24 Nobel laureates have now researched, taught or studied at the University of Freiburg.

“I have great affection for Freiburg. I grew up here starting in the 3rd grade. My father was a professor in Freiburg until he moved to the Max Planck Institute, and I have only good memories of my time there,” Genzel emphasizes. “I even started studying in Freiburg, then transferred to the University of Bonn after four semesters. I still like coming to Freiburg. We only recently sold my parents’ house there last year.”

Genzel is one of the world's leading scientists in the field of galaxy research. His interests include the formation, evolution and nuclei of galaxies as well as the formation and evolution of black holes and stars. To study the structure and dynamics of such objects, he and his team have developed new observation techniques and instruments in infrared, submillimeter and millimeter astronomy. For example, he has been able to prove that there is a black hole with a solar mass of 4.3 million at the center of the Milky Way. He thus succeeded in providing the best empirical evidence to date for the existence of black holes, which had been suggested in the General Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century. He shares the Nobel Prize for Physics with the mathematician Prof. Roger Penrose and the astronomer Prof. Andrea Ghez.

Reinhard Genzel graduated from the Berthold-Gymnasium in Freiburg and studied physics at the University of Freiburg from the 1970/71 winter semester to the 1972 summer semester. He then transferred to the University of Bonn, where he completed his studies. After completing his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, he continued his research career in the USA: first at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, and later at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California in Berkeley. Since 1986 he has been director and scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and since 1999 he has also been professor of physics at the University of California.

Nicolas Scherger