The Nobel prize delay is growing

ALBERT EINSTEIN doubted the existence of black holes. In 1939 he even tried to prove that the celestial objects—which are so dense that light itself cannot escape their gravitational pull—do not exist in the “real world”. But in 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death, Roger Penrose, a British physicist, wrote a groundbreaking paper that used maths to prove that black holes are a necessary consequence of the theory of relativity. This week, aged 89, Sir Roger won the Nobel prize for physics for his seminal work. It may seem odd awarding science’s most prestigious prize for a discovery 55 years ago. But the period between when Nobel-worthy discoveries are made, and when they are recognised, much like space-time itself, has curved upwards since the prizes were first handed out in 1901 (see chart).