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SUMMARY:ICFO | JOHN C. MATHER
CLASS:PUBLIC
DESCRIPTION:Thursday\, September 29\, 12:00\, ICFO AuditoriumJOHN C. MATHER
 Senior Astrophysicist and is the Senior Project Scientist for the James We
 bb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt\, 
 MD.$$ His research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology.  As an NRC
  postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (New 
 York City)\, he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explore
 r (74-76)\, and came to GSFC to be the Study Scientist (76-88)\, Project S
 cientist (88-98)\, and the Principal Investigator for the Far IR Absolute 
 Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE.  With the COBE team\, he showed that th
 e cosmic microwave background radiation has a blackbody spectrum within 50
  parts per million\, confirming the expanding universe model (aka the Big 
 Bang Theory) to extraordinary accuracy\, and initiating the study of cosmo
 logy as a precision science. The COBE team also made the first map of the 
 hot and cold spots in the background radiation (anisotropy)\, now attribut
 ed to quantum fluctuations in an inflationary period in the first 10-36 se
 c of the universe. These spots represent density fluctuations that are res
 ponsible for the existence of galaxies and clusters of galaxies\, due to t
 he action of gravity\, and their discovery was called “the most importan
 t scientific discovery of the century\, if not of all time” by Stephen H
 awking. The COBE maps have been confirmed and improved by two succeeding s
 pace missions\, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP\, built by 
 GSFC with Princeton University)\, and the Planck mission built by ESA.  Ba
 sed on these maps\, astronomers have now developed a “standard model” 
 of cosmology and have built detailed numerical simulations that begin to m
 atch Hubble observations\, and require the existence of both “dark matte
 r” and “dark energy”\, neither of which has been detected or deduced
  in laboratory experiments. Dr. Mather is the recipient of numerous awards
 \, including the Nobel Prize in Physics (2006) with George Smoot\, for the
  COBE work\, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal (2007). He is a memb
 er of many professional societies including the National Academy of Scienc
 es and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\n\n\nDr. Mather is now w
 orking with teams and committees to develop plans for a future great teles
 cope capable of observing signs of life on planets orbiting other stars.\n
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