Didier Queloz awarded the Insigna of Knight of National Order of the “Légion d'honneur"

During the ceremony, the French Ambassador to Switzerland, Frédéric Journès, congratulated Didier Queloz, professor at the Department of Physics, on this award, which he presented to him on behalf of the French President. "You have devoted your career to expanding our ability to discover and characterise exoplanets. Having paved the way, you have helped to create a new scientific field. Four thousand exoplanets have been discovered and listed since then," said Mr. Journès.

Quoting Saint Exupéry, he added: "The stars are lit up so that one day everyone can find their own star again", as The Little Prince believed, "your scientific career is entirely orientated towards the sky, and towards the extraordinary discovery that has earned you the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019, your star: 51 Pegasi and its first exoplanet, thanks to your research at the Geneva and Haute Provence observatories".

Didier Queloz then received the award and said: "The discovery of the first exoplanet and my story in this adventure is closely linked to that of the Haute-Provence Observatory. I accept this honour with gratitude and great pleasure, thinking of the technicians of this institution, most of whom are now deceased, who made this great collaboration possible and turned our knowledge of our universe upside down."

Didier Queloz grew up in western Switzerland and earned his PhD in 1995 at the Observatory of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Geneva, under the supervision of Professor Michel Mayor, on the topic of "Research by cross-correlation techniques". On October 6th of 1995, together with his doctoral supervisor, he discovered the very first planet outside our solar system from the Haute-Provence Observatory in France: 51 Pegasi b. An extraordinary discovery, for which both have received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.

This most significant observation, which triggered the "exoplanet revolution", has indeed caused a true revolution in astronomy and started the field of exoplanet research, of over 4,100 of which have been discovered to date.

In the following 25 years, Didier Queloz's most important scientific contributions have been focused on expanding our ability to detect and measure exoplanets in order to gain information about their physical structure and to better understand their formation and evolution in comparison to our Solar System. Didier Queloz moved to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in 2021, where he leads the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life (COPL). Since 1 January 2023, he has also been President of the Board of Trustees of the Marcel Benoist Foundation, which awards the Swiss science prize of the same name and in which France is represented. The Legion of Honour is the first national order of France, designed to honour its citizens and foreigners. It is the highest award and it is conferred for exceptional services to the nation.