MIT, Caltech Professors Share Nobel in Physics

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded this morning to three researchers "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." Background released by the Nobel committee said that LIGO refers to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, "the largest and most sensitive interferometer facility ever built."

The three winners are:

• Rainer Weiss, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Barry C. Barish, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology.
• Kip S. Thorne, professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.