Reinhard Genzel wins Crafoord Prize

Honourary Fellow of the RAS Professor Reinhard Genzel, of the University of California at Berkeley, USA and Scientific Director of the Max-Planck Institut fuer extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany has been named the joint winner of the 2012 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy.
Prof. Reinhard Genzel. Credit: Max Planck Institut fuer extraterrestrische PhysikProfessor Genzel shares the award from the Swedish Academy of Sciences with Professor Andrea Ghez of the University of California in Los Angeles, for their work in finding the most reliable evidence to date for the existence of black holes. The two scientists used the motion of stars around the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy to calculate that the supermassive black hole that resides there has a mass equivalent to 4 million Suns.
Crafoord Prizes in Mathematics and Astronomy: full details (http://www.crafoordprize.se/press/arkivpressreleases/thecrafoordprizeinmathematics2012andthecrafoordprizeinastronomy2012.5.6018c17913483dc064280001363.html)