George Smoot

George Smoot was an American astrophysicist and cosmologist who led measurements of tiny temperature variations, or anisotropies, in the cosmic microwave background radiation using NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer, COBE, satellite, providing strong observational support for the Big Bang theory. He shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Mather for their discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The COBE satellite launched in November 1989, and Smoot announced the breakthrough anisotropy measurement in April 1992. Smoot earned his PhD in particle physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 and spent his career at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1970 onward. He also received the Albert Einstein Medal in 2003 and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2006, and died in 2025.