headshot of Reinhard Genzel

Research Expertise and Interest

physics, existence and formation of black holes in galactic nuclei, the nature of the power source, the evolution of (ultra)luminous infrared galaxies, gas dynamics, the fueling of active galactic nuclei, the properties evolution of starburst galaxies

Research Description

Reinhard Genzel is a Nobel Laureate and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics. His research interests are in experimental astrophysics. His research group and he are studying the physical processes and the evolution of active galaxies and in particular of their central regions. One key issue they have been pursuing is the question whether the accretion onto massive black holes, or star formation powers active and luminous galaxies. For instance, in one class of very luminous galaxies they were recently able to demonstrate from mid-infrared spectroscopy on the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) that enormous bursts of star formation triggered by the collision of galaxies can produce quasar-like luminosities in the infrared. Such galaxies were apparently much more common in the past than in the local Universe. They are also engaged in testing the paradigm that active galactic nuclei indeed all contain massive black holes. In the nucleus of our own Galaxy they were able to show from near-infrared imaging observations of the motions of individual stars in the central few light days that there must be a million solar mass, central black hole. Such key science goals have been driving their experimental program. They have been developing novel instrumentation, mainly in the infrared and submillimeter range, for large ground-based, airborne and space telescopes. They have been developing sensitive infrared spectrometers and imagers across the entire 1-1000mm band. They are active in the area of adaptive optics with laser stars.

Reinhard Genzel received his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn (FRG) in 1978. He came to UC Berkeley as a Miller Fellow in 1980 and joined the Physics Department faculty as Associate Professor in 1981. He left UC Berkeley in 1986 to become Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich (FRG) where he is also Honorary Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilian University. In 1999 he came back to UC Berkeley as part-time Professor. 

Awards and Honors include the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society (1979), Presidential Investigator Award (1983), Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1986), Leibniz Prize of the German Science Foundation (1990), Foreign Member of the Academie des Sciences (France, 1998), Lyman Spitzer Lecturer (Princeton, 1998), Sackler Lecturer 2000 (Princeton University), Oort Professor 2000 (Leiden University), de Vaucouleurs Medal 2000 (University of Texas, Austin), Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (2000) and Prix Janssen (2001).

Reinhard Genzel shares half the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics with UCLA professor Andrea Ghez "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy". The other half of the prize went to United Kingdom theoretical physicist Roger Penrose. Read more about this Nobel Prize.

In the News

High-powered, but supportive, environment draws students to Nobel winners’ labs

On the morning that University of California, Berkeley, professor Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, her first stop after a 7 a.m. press conference and subsequent media interviews was her campus lab in the Innovative Genomics Institute. When she exited the elevator with her family at 10:30 a.m., she was greeted by dozens of graduate students and lab staff, while several dozen current and former lab members joined in via Zoom.

Nobel Prize ceremonies go virtual for Doudna, Genzel

For the first time since World War II, winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes will not be receiving their medals and diplomas from the King of Sweden in Stockholm. The pandemic has forced the Nobel Committees to deliver the medals to recipients at their homes, with just immediate family and consular or embassy officials in attendance.

Disaster looms for gas cloud falling into Milky Way’s central black hole

Astronomers led by UC Berkeley’s Reinhard Genzel, also of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, have observed a cloud of gas several times the mass of Earth approaching the 4.3 million solar-mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Theorist Eliot Quataert calculates that the cloud will not survive the encounter, but will be heated and shredded in 2013.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
October 7, 2020

What Earth Owes to Black Holes

The Atlantic
Marina Koren
Not so long ago, scientists couldn't say with much confidence that black holes existed, nor did they know that a giant one sits at the center of our own galaxy. Yesterday, the Nobel Committee recognized decades of black-hole research by awarding its physics prize to three scientists. Half the prize went to Roger Penrose, of the University of Oxford, who showed that black holes could exist, and half went to Reinhard Genzel, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and UC Berkeley, and Andrea Ghez, of UCLA, who provided the most convincing evidence that a particular black hole - the supermassive one at the center of our Milky Way - did indeed exist. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in dozens of sources, including NBC News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR, Vox, and The Mercury News.
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October 6, 2020

Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Three Scientists For Work on Black Holes

The New York Times
Dennis Overbye and Derrick Bryson Taylor
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists today for their work on black holes, massive objects that swallow light and everything else forever that falls into their reach. They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. Genzel is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.Working independently, Genzel and Ghez, and their teams, have spent the last decades tracking stars and dust clouds whizzing around the center of our galaxy with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, trying to see if that dark dusty realm does indeed harbor a black hole. "Their pioneering work has given us the most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way," the Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its announcement. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in dozens of sources, including NBC News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR, Vox, and The Mercury News.
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