Didier Queloz

Didier Queloz is Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory and Geneva University. He is at the origin of the exoplanet revolution in astrophysics. Until recently, the Solar System has provided us with the only basis for our knowledge of planets and life in the universe. In 1995 Prof Queloz has dramatically changed this view with the discovery he made with Michel Mayor of the first giant planet outside the solar system. This seminal discovery has spawned a real revolution in astronomy both in terms of new instrumentation and understanding of planet formation and evolution. Since then Prof Queloz has been involved in a successful series of developments of precise spectrographs, considerable improving the precision of the Doppler technique.

In 2007, in the emerging area of planetary transit detection, he established a successful international collaboration with the WASP team from UK, providing the spectroscopic confirmation and precise photometry follow-up to confirm and characterize planetary candidates. He also took an active part in the Corot mission, pioneering planet transit detection from space. He conducted a part of the work that led to the first transit detection of a rocky planet (Corot-7b).

In 2012 he received with Michel Mayor 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 outside the Solar System.