Ghez, Andrea Mia, 1965–, American astrophysicist, b. New York City, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1992. She has been on the faculty at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, since 1994. Ghez shared half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics with Reinhard Genzel for their discovery of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way; the other half was awarded to Sir Roger Penrose, who showed mathematically how black holes could and would form. Working independently, Ghez and Genzel used high-resolution astronomical imaging techniques, including adaptive optics and speckle imaging, to determine that whatever is at the center of the Milky Way must have a mass equal to four million suns in order to exert enough gravitational pull to control the stars and gas in its orbit.
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