Every year, before I give out the Physics prize, I say a few words about the most exciting developments in Physics during the previous year. Last year, the biggest event was the imaging of a rotating black hole lit up by an external light source. It may well win a Nobel Prize in Physics for Harvard's Event Horizon Telescope collaboration. I found this particularly exciting because the first person to predict what a rotating black hole would look like was me, back in 1986! In December I visited the group at Harvard. They put my paper on the big screen and we discussed my work of over three decades ago. It went from almost complete obscurity to having its most citations in 2019. I never imagined that such a crazy idea would one day prove to be a reality.

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The purpose of the prize is to encourage those of you who love maths and physics, and don't we all, to study these subjects at the highest level at school and university. This will lead to exciting life-long careers in STEM-related areas. This year's book-prize, for your best year-11 Physics student of 2019, is entitled "When Galaxies Collide", written by an eminent Australian Astrophysicist Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith. It gives me great pleasure to award this prize, which has been signed by Lisa, to ...

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