This year‘s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists, Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. Peebles was awarded half of the prize for cosmology and Mayor and Queloz were awarded a quarter each for the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star 51 Pegasi. Their discovery was reported almost 25 years ago and started a new era of exoplanetary research. This article presents the steps leading to the discovery of planet 51 Pegasi b and the following efforts to detect and characterise exoplanets. The future of the exoplanetary research field is also discussed in this article. and Petr Kabáth.