https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/jim-peebles-richly-deserved-his-nobel-prize/

After learning that he’d won the Nobel Prize in Physics on October 8, James Peebles told the New York Times that the possibility had previously “crossed his mind.” If so, his was one of the few minds to have been so traversed.

That Peebles has made numerous contributions to cosmology—theories that have helped transform the field from metaphysics to physics—is indisputable. In the words of the announcement from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, his half-share of this year’s physics prize “rewards new understanding of the universe’s structure and history.” That description, however, also hints at why his Nobel came as a surprise.