Canadian-Born James Peebles Wins This Year’s Nobel Prize in Physics

(L-R) Nobel Prize winners in Physics James Peebles in Princeton, N.J., Didier Queloz in London, England, and Michel Mayor in Madrid, Spain, in a combination photo of Oct. 8, 2019. Peebles, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, won for his theoretical discoveries in cosmology. Swiss star-gazers Mayor and Queloz, both of the University of Geneva, were honoured for finding an exoplanet—a planet outside our solar system—that orbits a sun-like star, the Nobel committee said. AP Photo

It was a day of toasts and celebrations for James Peebles, the Canadian scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday, but he said the night will hopefully end like any other—with “a quiet dinner” with his wife.

Peebles, who was born in the Winnipeg community of St. Boniface and has taught at Princeton University for the past five decades, said he is gearing up for what he described as the “aura of the Nobel.”