National Post (National Edition)

Physicist born in Manitoba wins Nobel

- MEAGAN CAMPBELL

In 1971, James Peebles stood atop a lab table in a lecture hall at Princeton University. The professor was tall and thin, and beside him was a massive vat of water with a drain at the bottom. He pulled the plug and asked his students: Will the water drain clockwise or counter-clockwise?

“You could’ve just given a lecture on centripeta­l force and gravity without bothering to fill up this 200 litre vat of water,” says Robert Bunning, one of Peeble’s former students. “The most impressive thing was he was making an effort to bring physics to life. He thought it was a beautiful subject.”

On Tuesday, Peebles, 84, won the Nobel Prize in physics, sharing the $1.2 million award with Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for revealing the wonder of the evolution of the universe and discoverin­g planets orbiting distant suns.

By studying the earliest moments after the birth of the universe, Peebles developed a theoretica­l framework for the evolution of the cosmos that led to the understand­ing of dark energy and dark matter — substances that can’t be observed by any scientific instrument­s but nonetheles­s make up 95 per cent of the universe.

Mayor and Queloz of the University of Geneva revolution­ized astronomy, the Nobel Committee said, when in 1995 they announced the discovery of a large, gaseous world circling a star 50 lightyears from our own sun — the first extrasolar planet found around a sun-like star. In the decades since, scientists have detected thousands more, and astronomer­s now think our universe contains more planets than stars.

Peebles told news conference­s Tuesday that while awards are “very much appreciate­d,” that’s not why young people should study science. “You should enter it for the love of the science,” he said. “You should enter science because you are fascinated by it. That’s what I did.”

Born in St. Boniface before it became part of Winnipeg, Peebles completed his undergradu­ate degree at the University of Manitoba and said part of his childhood was spent building or taking apart thing such as the clocks in his family’s home.

“One of my earliest memories is throwing a tantrum because I wasn’t allowed to put together the coffee percolator,” he said. “I simply liked looking at the world around us.”

Peebles has been retired for 20 years, but he says he has continued to research and teach at a “relaxed rate” because he enjoys it.

“Life will go on,” he said in a phone interview between media events. “I suppose the aura of the Nobel is such that my life will change, but I don’t think I’m going to let it change much. You understand, I’m used to a quiet life.”

He will receive half the prize while Mayor and Queloz will share the rest. Peebles said he plans to give some of the money to charity and his family. “I owe a lot to the University of Manitoba and a chunk will go to it.”

 ?? EDUARDO MUNOZ / REUTERS ?? Canadian-American scientist James Peebles speaks to well-wishers at his home in Princeton, N.J., Tuesday after it
was announced he won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics along with two researcher­s from Switzerlan­d.
EDUARDO MUNOZ / REUTERS Canadian-American scientist James Peebles speaks to well-wishers at his home in Princeton, N.J., Tuesday after it was announced he won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics along with two researcher­s from Switzerlan­d.

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