Hutton Honors College

The Big Bang, Black Holes, and . . . .
Discussion Lunch with John Mather, Nobel Laureate in Physics

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 * 12:30-2 p.m. * Harlos House (1331 E. Tenth St.) * SIGN-UP REQUIRED

Join John Mather, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, for lunch and an informal discussion that can range as widely as your interests and questions. Mather won the Nobel Prize for his work with George Smoot on Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and was included in Time magazine's 2007 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. COBE is a satellite that measures black holes and cosmic radiation; its readings give scientists a better understanding of the universe and provided evidence in support of the Big Bang theory. Mather first proposed the project in 1974 and spearheaded the efforts to make that proposal a reality. As the Nobel Prize committee stated in regards to COBE's findings and their impact on the field of cosmology (the branch of astronomy dealing with the evolution and structure of the universe), "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science." Mather is a senior astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. The lunch will be co-sponsored by the Wells Scholars Program.

Mather, on campus as a guest of the Department of Physics, will deliver its Konopinski Lecture, "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize and on to James Webb Space Telescope," on Tuesday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Whittenberger Auditorium of the IMU. The talk is free and open to the public.

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