Like most human beings in the Pacific Standard Time Zone, Andrea Ghez was fast asleep at 2 a.m. on Oct. 6 when her landline rang (a surprise for the UCLA professor of astrophysics, who uses her cell phone for nearly everything). Unlike most human beings–and surprise number two–the caller was from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, informing her that she had won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Now the fourth woman ever to receive the prestigious award, Ghez shares half of the honor with Reinhard Genzel of University of California, Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Another physicist, Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford, was awarded the other half of the prize.
“I’m just so thrilled to be awarded the Nobel Prize this morning,” Ghez said in a press conference.
