Nobel winner Queloz to head new research centre in Zurich

Swiss Nobel Laureate Didier Queloz is moving to the top-ranked Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich to help establish a new centre looking at the origins of life. The 2019 winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics will be designated director of the new ETH Center for the Origin and Prevalence of Life, the ETH Zurich announced on Friday. Queloz will leave his alma mater, the University of Geneva, in September. He will then divide his time between the ETH Zurich, and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where he has held a professorship since 2013. Cambridge scientists are already working on the fundamental questions of life through the “Initiative for Planetary Science and Life in the Universe”. Perfect timing In an interview published on the ETH Zurich website, Queloz said that the reason for his more was very simple: the project was fantastic and the timing “perfect”. Rapid progress relevant to this topic has been made in recent years in various fields...