George Smoot | |
|---|---|
 Smoot at 2009 POVO conference in The Netherlands | |
| Born | George Fitzgerald Smoot III February 20, 1945 Yukon, Florida, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Cosmic microwave background radiation |
| Awards | NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1992) Kilby Award (1993) American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award (1994)[1] E. O. Lawrence Award (1994) Albert Einstein Medal (2003) Nobel Prize in Physics (2006) Gruber Prize (2006) Daniel Chalonge Medal (2006) Oersted Medal (2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | UC Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/Paris Diderot University/Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
| Thesis | Charge exchange of positive Kaon on platinum at three GeV/C (1971) |
| Doctoral advisor | David H. Frisch[2] |
| Part of a series on |
| Physical cosmology |
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George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and the second contestant to win the $1 million prize on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation".
This work helped further the Big Bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite.[3] According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science."[4] Smoot donated his share of the Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to a charitable foundation.[5]
Smoot has been at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1970. He is Chair of the Endowment Fund "Physics of the Universe" of Paris Center for Cosmological Physics. Apart from being elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Smoot has been honored by several universities worldwide with doctorates or professorships. He was also the recipient of the Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2006), the Daniel Chalonge Medal from the International School of Astrophysics (2006), the Einstein Medal from the Albert Einstein Society (2003), the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the US Department of Energy (1995), and the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA (1991). He is a member of the advisory board of the journal Universe.
Smoot is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.[6]
- ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
- ^ Katherine Bourzac (12 January 2007). "Nobel Causes". Technology Review. Archived from the original on 2012-01-29. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
And Smoot himself can still vividly recall playing a practical joke on his graduate thesis advisor, MIT physics professor David Frisch.
- ^ Horgan, J. (1992) Profile: George F. Smoot – COBE's Cosmic Cartographer, Scientific American 267(1), 34–41.
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006" (Press release). The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 3 October 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-08-15. Retrieved 2006-10-05.
- ^ "Berkeley Nobel laureates donate prize money to charity" (PDF). Associated Press. 22 March 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
- ^ "A Letter from America's Physics Nobel Laureates" (PDF).