# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/michel-mayor
# Generated: 2026-08-31T18:42:28.661Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/michel-mayor"
name: "Michel Mayor"
slug: "michel-mayor"
description: "In 1995, he and Didier Queloz spotted the first planet orbiting a sun-like star beyond our solar system — a find that cracked open the search for other worlds and earned them the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics."
tagline: "Swiss astrophysicist & Nobel laureate of Physics"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Michel_Mayor_ESA20824331_(cropped).jpeg"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "Switzerland"
  isoCode: "CH"
category:
  name: "Scientists"
  slug: "scientists"
profileType:
  name: "Scientist"
  slug: "scientist"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1942-01-12"
livingStatus: "LIVING"
scores:
  popularity:           59.88
  momentum:             28.11414634146341
  historical:           24.12978
  currentAttention:     32.26151761517615
  sourceConfidence:     65
  profileCompleteness:  75
  trendDirection:       "RISING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  100
  category: null
tags:
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    slug: "astronomy"
  - name: "Physics"
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  - name: "Switzerland"
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  - name: "Europe"
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platforms:
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    url:       "https://exoplanets.ch/team/faculty-members/michel-mayor/"
sources:
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    type:  "WIKIDATA"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Mişel Mayor"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Michel Mayor"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://hak.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Mayor"
    title: "Michel Mayor"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor was born on 12 January 1942 and built his career as a Swiss astrophysicist at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. In 1995, working with Didier Queloz, he discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi — a breakthrough that reshaped astronomy's understanding of planetary systems and Earth's place in the cosmos. The discovery brought him the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize, the 2015 Kyoto Prize, and, alongside Queloz and Jim Peebles, the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. He formally retired in 2007 but continues as an active researcher at the Observatory of Geneva. He has noted that humans will never migrate to such exoplanets — they are "much, much too far away" and would take "hundreds of millions of days" to reach — though his work has made the search for extraterrestrial communications from those distant worlds a more practical prospect than it once seemed.