John C. Mather Named a College Park Professor in the Department of Physics
- Details
- Category: Department News
- Published: Wednesday, September 07 2011 13:30
Dr. John C. Mather has been named a College Park Professor in the Department of Physics.
Dr. Mather was among the first to make precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a consequence of the universe’s expansion after the Big Bang. Precision measurements by Mather and colleagues verified the Big Bang model, established the field of precision cosmology, and helped tie together the once-disparate fields of elementary particle physics (the study of the early universe in the first fraction of a second) and cosmology (the study of the evolution of the universe in the last few billion years). He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006.
Dr. Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory in NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018.
