Reinhard Genzel

Reinhard Genzel (born 24 March 1952) is a German astrophysicist who made important discoveries about our galaxy. He is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor at LMU, and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2020, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for finding a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy. He shared this prize with Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose. In interviews, Genzel has talked about his journey as a scientist and the influence of his father, Ludwig Genzel, as well as working with Charles H. Townes.

Life and career

Reinhard Genzel was born in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany. He studied physics at the University of Freiburg and the University of Bonn, earning a PhD in radioastronomy in 1978. After that, he worked at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching and also taught at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Work

Reinhard Genzel studies infrared- and submillimetre astronomy. He and his team created special tools for observing space from the ground and from space. They used these tools to watch the stars near the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, moving around something called Sagittarius A*. They showed these stars are circling a very big object, which we now know is a black hole. Genzel also looks at how galaxies, like big star systems, form and change over time.

In July 2018, Genzel and others shared news about a star named star S2. This star was moving around Sgr A* at a very fast speed—7,650 kilometers per second, or about 2.55% the speed of light—when it came closest to the black hole in May 2018. This helped scientists test ideas from a theory called general relativity and find more proof that the theory works.

Awards

• Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, 1973–1975
• Miller Research Fellowship, 1980–1982
• Otto Hahn Medal, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 1980
• Presidential Young Investigator Award, National Science Foundation, 1984
• Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, American Astronomical Society, 1986
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1990
• De Vaucouleurs Medal, University of Texas, 2000
• Prix Jules Janssen, Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society), 2000
• Stern Gerlach Medal for experimental physics, Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, 2003
• Balzan Prize for Infrared Astronomy, 2003
• Albert Einstein Medal, 2007
• Shaw Prize, 2008
• "Galileo 2000" Prize, 2009
• Dr. h.c. Leiden University, 2010
• Karl Schwarzschild Medal, Deutsche Astronomische Gesellschaft, 2011
• Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy, 2012
• Tycho Brahe Prize, European Astronomical Society, 2012
• Pour le Mérite, 2013
• Dr. h.c. University of Paris, 2014
• Harvey Prize, Technion Institute, Israel, 2014
• Herschel Medal, Royal Astronomical Society, 2014
• Nobel Prize in Physics, 2020
• Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art, 2021
• Dr. h.c. Grenoble Alpes University, 2023
• Rectorat's Medal University of Chile, 2025

Membership of scientific societies

Reinhard Genzel is part of many important science groups around the world. He became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1985. He was invited to join the Académie des Sciences in France in 1998 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2000. Over the years, he also joined the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina in 2002, became a Senior member of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften in 2003, and was accepted as a Foreign member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences in 2011. In 2012, he became a Foreign member of the Royal Society in London, and in 2020, he joined the Pontifical Academy.