**With apologies for cross-posting**
For Immediate Release: October 5, 2006
Contact: Suzanne Wu / 773-834-0386 / swu@press.uchicago.edu
The Astrophysical Journal Letters authors awarded 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
John C. Mather (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) and George F. Smoot
(University of California, Berkeley) have been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in
Physics for collaborative work exploring the infancy of the universe, findings
which first appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, published by the
University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Astronomical Society.
According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel
Prize, Dr. Mather and Dr. Smoot received the prize for work that studied cosmic
microwave background radiation in the first few instants after the universe was
formed. Using data from NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), their
findings – which confirmed predictions of the Big Bang scenario – offer an
important clue into the origins of how matter began to aggregate, and thus how
galaxies, stars, and life was able to develop.
“A preliminary measurement of the cosmic microwave background spectrum by the
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite” by Mather et al. was published in
The Astrophysical Journal Letters in 1990:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/185717.
“Structure in the COBE differential microwave radiometer first-year maps” by
Smoot et al. was published in 1992 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/186504.
For more coverage of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics and Dr. Mather and Dr.
Smoot’s groundbreaking research, please visit:
- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2006/press.html
- NASA News:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/nobel_prize_mather.html
- UC Berkeley News:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/10/03_nobelph.shtml
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