Albert Einstein Memorial Lecture

Thursday, April 29, 2010

5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Dodds Auditorium, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University (Corner of Washington Rd. & Prospect Ave., Princeton)

Nobel Laureate Speaker: John Cromwell Mather, Nobel Laureate 2006 - Physics
Topic: "Discovering Where We Came From: The Big Bang Theory and Looking Back Through the James Webb Space Telescope"

Presenting Sponsors: Bristol-Myers Squibb; NRG Energy; The Olsen Foundation; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals Inc. 

The history of the universe in a nutshell, from the Big Bang to now, and on to the future - John Mather will tell the story of how we got here, how the Universe began with a Big Bang, how it could have produced an Earth where sentient beings can live, and how those beings are discovering their history. Mather was Project Scientist for NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which measured the spectrum (the color) of the heat radiation from the Big Bang, discovered hot and cold spots in that radiation, and hunted for the first objects that formed after the great explosion. He will show how Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, how the COBE mission was built, and how the COBE data support the Big Bang theory. He will also show NASA's plans for the next great telescope in space, the James Webb Space Telescope.  It will look even farther back in time than the Hubble Space Telescope, and will look inside the dusty cocoons where stars and planets are being born today.  

Dr. John C. Mather of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Mather shares the prize with George F. Smoot of the University of California for their collaborative work on understanding the Big Bang. Mather and Smoot analyzed data from NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which studied the pattern of radiation from the first few instants after the universe was formed.

Currently, Dr. Mather is working on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), where he is the senior project scientist. JWST will be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and is scheduled to launch in 2013.

Dr. Mather is the author of many publications, including his book, "The Very First Light", which was written along with John Boslough and is now in its 2nd edition (2008).