Laureate Biography
John C. Mather shared the 2006 the Nobel Prize in Physics with George F. Smoot for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. John Mather, together with George Smoot and a team of over 1,000 researches, coordinated the 1989 launch of NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which studied the pattern of radiation from the first few instants after the universe was formed. Its results provided support for the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe and its measurements allowed for the foundation of cosmology as a precise science. Mather was born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1946 to parents who were both teachers –
his father at what is now Virginia Tech and his mother at a local high school. Before his second birthday, his family moved to the Rutgers Agricultural Experiment Station, in Sussex County, New Jersey. He attended Wantage Consolidated Elementary School and his interest in science was marked from an early age: he remembers his first book in astronomy, Astronomy Made Simple, and his first one-tube radio kit.
He went to high school at Newton High School, also attending continued education programs at Assumption College and Cornell University which were sponsored by the National Science Foundation. His undergraduate degree was completed at Swarthmore College and his doctorate training was received from the University of California, Berkeley, where his thesis project focused on the newly discovered Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
Mather then went on to work with Pat Thaddeus at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. There he submitted a mission proposal, together with Rainer Weiss, David Wilkinson, and Michael Hauser, and their colleagues Dirk Muehlner and Bob Silverberg, under NASA’s Opportunity 6 and 7, for Scout and Delta-launched satellite missions. This mission was formerly accepted in 1976 and so began the beginning of the COBE satellite project, with Mather working as a Principle Investigator and Study Scientist. From then on, his professional life was almost entirely focused on COBE. Details, can be found in Mather’s Nobel Lecture.
After COBE was completed, Mather’ began work on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at the James Webb observatory, named after James Webb, the second NASA administrator. Today, John Mather is a Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope as well as a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory, located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Chief Scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006
John Mather’s Nobel Lecture
John Mather’s Website
James Webb Space Telescope
Wikipedia: John Mather
