John C. Mather
Facts
Photo: P. Izzo
John C. Mather
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006
Born: 7 August 1946, Roanoke, VA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
Prize motivation: “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
Various types of particles and radiation travel through outer space, including cosmic background radiation, which has been carefully studied through measurements from the COBE satellite. John Mather, a driving force in the project, had particular responsibility for a part that in 1989 indicated that cosmic background radiation’s spectrum corresponds to black-body radiation—radiation emitted by a dark, glowing body. The result provided evidence that the background radiation is a remnant from the creation of the universe in the Big Bang.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
