Md. professor shares Nobel Prize in physics

A Johns Hopkins University professor is one of a trio of scientists sharing the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Tuesday.

Adam Riess, an astronomy professor at the university, shared the prize with fellow American Saul Perlmutter and U.S.-Australian citizen Brian Schmidt.

The trio was honored “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae.”

Riess, 41, said he got a phone call around 5:30 a.m. and that his “jaw dropped” when he heard the news. He says he couldn’t believe it and “didn’t know if this would happen ever.”

The work Riess was honored for stems from a 1998 discovery that the universe is expanding

Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

Schmidt is the head of the High-z Supernova Search Team at the Australian National University in Weston Creek, Australia.