First Jewish Woman to Win the Nobel Prize in Physics

Andrea Ghez became the first Jewish woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics when the 2020 prize recognized her work on the centre of the Milky Way. Ghez shared one half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy; Roger Penrose received the other half for theoretical work on black-hole formation. NobelPrize.org documents Ghez as a 2020 Physics laureate and records the official award motivation. JWR’s first-status finding also compares the chronology of women Nobel Physics laureates with the documented list of Jewish Physics laureates. That comparison identifies no earlier woman satisfying both conditions. The Nobel announcement was made on 6 October 2020, the date used by JWR for the achievement, while later Nobel events and lectures provide supporting documentation of the award.