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Honoris Causa » John C. Mather
John Cromwell Mather (August 7, 1946) is an American astrophysicist and cosmologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite with George Smoot. This work helped consolidate the Big Bang theory of the universe. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be considered the starting point of cosmology as a precision science."
He earned his B.S. in Physics in 1968 from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in 1974 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland and an adjunct professor of physics in the School of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland.
He was responsible for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project; he previously organized and led the proposal that led to the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite; and he was also principal investigator of the FIRAS instrument, which measured the cosmic microwave background spectrum, for which he won his Nobel Prize. In 2007, Time magazine included Mather among the 100 most influential people in the world. In October 2012, Time magazine again included him in a special issue on new space discoveries as one of the 25 most influential people in space.
His godfather is the astrophysicist and Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of La Laguna, John Beckam.
