Nobel Laureate thought call was a joke

Brian Schmidt

When Brian Schmidt heard he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics he thought it was just a practical joke by some of his graduate students.

He also thought they had done a pretty good job of imitating a Swedish accent.

But the late-night phone call, from a Swedish-accented woman, was indeed genuine.

Professor Schmidt, a Canberra-based astronomer, was told he and US scientists Saul Perlmutter and Adam Reiss would be sharing the Nobel Prize for Physics.

The trio won the award for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

Professor Schmidt preferred to share the honour around when he spoke to reporters at Parliament House, in Canberra, on Wednesday.

"We think of Nobel prizes as being a personal achievement, but really it's a celebration, I think, of astronomy and the science that's been going on for 100 years," he said.

Professor Schmidt and his team tracked how the universe had expanded over time.

They had expected that gravity would slow down the growth of the universe.

"What we found was the opposite - the universe was speeding up.

"It was being pushed, which means that gravity is working differently than we expected."

Professor Schmidt said the teams' finding came from one of the greatest scientists of all time — Albert Einstein — who said if the universe was full of energy, gravity would push rather than pull.

"So it would seem that by discovering an accelerating universe, our team actually discovered 75 per cent of the universe as this new magical stuff we call dark energy," he said.

The Australian National University academic said he wanted the award to bring greater attention to science.

"I do hope it will allow us to advance science in Australia and serve as an inspiration for budding young scientists to say 'Geez, maybe I could do that.'"

He plans to put the prize money to "some sort of public good" after consulting members of his team.

Professor Schmidt still planned to teach his third-year cosmology students later on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the award would make Australians proud of their researchers.

With only 0.3 per cent of the world's population, Australia produced three per cent of its knowledge.

"As this recognition shows, a lot of that is absolutely world-class," Gillard said.

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