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George Smoot, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has died at the age of
80. He was known for his groundbreaking work on the cosmic microwave background radiation, which provided crucial evidence for the Big Bang
theory by mapping tiny temperature fluctuations in the universe's early afterglow. He passed away on September 18, 2025, in Paris.
Who he was: Smoot was a professor emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley and
a Nobel laureate who co-won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Mather.
His scientific contributions: Using data from the Cosmic Background
Explorer (COBE) satellite, he and his colleagues created the first map
of the early universe, revealing minuscule temperature variations that eventually became the galaxies and clusters of galaxies we see today.
His legacy: His discovery, called "the greatest discovery of the
century" by Stephen Hawking, is considered a foundational moment in
precision cosmology. He also founded the Berkeley Center for
Cosmological Physics and remained an active public figure, appearing on
shows like The Big Bang Theory.
Personal life: He was born on February 20, 1945, in Yukon, Florida, and
earned his doctorate from MIT before joining the faculty at Berkeley. He passed away in Paris on September 18, 2025.

also https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/09/29/nobelist-george-smoot-whose-satellite-experiments-validated-the-big-bang-theory-dies-at-80/

Nobelist George Smoot, whose satellite experiments validated the Big
Bang theory, dies at 80

Smoot, a physicist at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, shared the 2006
Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting minute temperature variations in
the cosmic microwave background, a prediction of the Big Bang theory.

By Robert Sanders

a man in a brown leather jacket, blue shirt and glasses, with the
Andromeda Galaxy in the background.
George F. Smoot III, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of physics, died
in Paris on Sept. 18, 2025, at the age of 80.
Courtesy of George Smoot

September 29, 2025

Physicist George Smoot told a packed press conference in 1992, rCLIf
yourCOre religious, itrCOs like seeing God.rCY

He was referring to the cosmic microwave background, which he and
colleague John Mather imaged with NASArCOs Cosmic Background Explorer
(COBE), marking the first detection of the minute temperature
fluctuations in the radiation surrounding us. That detection was a confirmation of the Big Bang theory rCo the idea that the universe was
born in a rapid cosmic expansion nearly 14 billion years ago rCo and
earned him and Mather the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Smoot, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an emeritus faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, died on Sept. 18 in Paris of a heart attack. He was
80 and, since 2009, had been a physics professor at the Universit|- Paris-Cit|- and an affiliate of the Laboratoire Astroparticule et
Cosmologie (APC).

Detection of the CMB was a triumph of precision cosmology rCo the detailed measurement of the temperature of the universe that continues to reveal
new details about the universerCOs infancy and its evolution since.

According to an obituary posted by APC on Sept. 24, rCLToday cosmology is
at the center stage of physics, due in no small part to this [SmootrCOs]
and subsequent measurements of the CMB. This discovery prompted many researchers to switch to cosmology. A host of experiments, from the
ground, from stratospheric balloons and from space have now followed the pioneering COBE measurements.rCY

two men signing their names on the underside of a black chair
George F. Smoot (right) and John C. Mather (left), like many Nobel
Laureates before them, autographed a chair at Kaf|- Satir at the Nobel
Museum in Stockholm on Dec. 6, 2006.
Copyright -- The Nobel Museum 2006 Photo: Fredrik Persson

Smoot and Mather, who earned his Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley in
1974, together led the building and launch of the COBE satellite in 1989
in a highly competitive race to detect the signature of the primordial explosion that birthed the universe. According to the reigning theory of
the origin of the universe, the Big Bang fireball 13.7 billion years ago filled the universe with heat that has since cooled to a mere 2.7
degrees above absolute zero. But the theory also predicted that the temperature should vary across the sky, though previous experiments had
failed to detect any variation down to 1 part in 1,000

MatherrCOs instrument confirmed that the microwave background radiation matched perfectly the spectrum of colors that astronomers predicted if
the universe formed in a fireball.

SmootrCOs instruments went further, detecting fluctuations equivalent to 1 part in 100,000 in the 2.7 degree Kelvin microwave glow. These slight variations in temperature and density of the early universe grew over
billions of years into the galaxies and clusters of galaxies we see today.

When Smoot announced the detection in 1992, the late Stephen Hawking
called it the greatest scientific discovery of the century.

a man holding a T-shirt while talking with a man in a wheelchair
Smoot with Stephen Hawking during his March 2007 campus visit. Hawking
called SmootrCOs detection of the fluctuations in the microwave background
the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century. Smoot offered
Hawking a T-shirt advertising the Berkeley Center for Cosmological
Physics, which he directed.
Peg Skorpinski for UC Berkeley

rCLThose measurements really confirmed our picture of the Big Bang,rCY Smoot said at the time. rCLBy studying the fluctuations in the microwave
background, we found a tool that allowed us to explore the early
universe, to see how it evolved and what itrCOs made of.rCY

Smoot, who had been at Berkeley Lab since 1971, was appointed to the UC Berkeley physics faculty in 1994. The Nobel Prize committee cited Smoot
and Mather for rCLthe discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of
the cosmic microwave background radiation.rCY

In 2007, Smoot used $500,000 of his Nobel Prize winnings to help endow
the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics.

As Smoot acknowledged on his website, the Nobel Prize rCLbrought a new dimension to his life.rCY In addition to research and teaching, he began traveling the world as a speaker and commentator on science-related
issues. He also appeared in cameos on the celebrated sitcom rCLThe Big
Bang Theory,rCY and, in 2008, was one of only two people to win the $1
million prize on the game show rCLAre you smarter than a fifth grader?rCY

rCLHe was somebody who always enjoyed looking ahead to what was happening
in the world and what was coming next,rCY said colleague Saul Perlmutter,
a UC Berkeley professor of physics and himself a Nobel Prize winner for discovering dark energy. rCLHe would come to your office and explain to
you why you had to change something you were doing because of what was
about to happen. Almost always, I had that feeling that he was right,
but it was very hard to operationalize any of the advice!rCY

The APC obituary called Smoot a rCLlarger than life characterrCY who rCLrevolutionized our understanding of the cosmos and placed cosmology on
a firm experimental footing.rCY

Most recently, he had focused on applying basic physics discoveries to
improve peoplesrCO lives, particularly in the fields of air quality and medicine. According to his website, Smoot rCLrCa sees his role to inspire
and encourage smart young people, to set them off on the path to discovery.rCY

rCLHe did really enjoy the question of how do you reach a public and how
do you spread the excitement about science,rCY Perlmutter said.

Origins of COBE
George Fitzgerald Smoot III was born in Yukon, Florida, on Feb. 20,
1945. He graduated from high school in Ohio, but spent part of his
childhood in Alaska with his father, a hydrologist for the U.S.
Geological Survey. His mother was a science teacher and school
principal. On SmootrCOs website, he wrote that in Alaska he rCLdiscovered a new way of life more directly linked with nature and the juxtaposition
to modern technology and understanding of mankind.rCY

B&W photo of a man a suit and tie standing by a metal apparatus
Smoot with a model of the Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) that
flew aboard the COBE satellite in 1989.
Courtesy of George Smoot

He graduated from MIT with a dual major in math and physics and
completed his PhD there in 1970 in the field of experimental elementary particle physics. He then moved to Berkeley Lab as a postdoc in the
group of Luis Alvarez, a Nobel Prize winner and UC Berkeley professor of physics. Alvarez had become interested in experiments relating to
cosmology, and Smoot followed in his footsteps, worked on the High
Altitude Particle Physics Experiment (HAPPE), a stratospheric weather
balloon designed to detect antimatter in cosmic rays. They were
unsuccessful.

In 1973, Smoot changed his focus to studying the CMB, which had only
been detected in 1964. He worked with Richard Muller, another member of
the Alvarez group and now a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of physics,
to develop microwave detectors that they flew on balloons to reach
heights above much of the atmosphere. Their team eventually developed an instrument, called a Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR), to detect differences in the CMB temperature in spots 60 degrees apart on the sky,
which they flew aboard a U-2 spy plane. It worked, finding an imbalance
in the temperature of the sky that implied our galaxy is traveling about
1 million miles per hour through the universe.

At the time, Smoot said, cosmology was a fringe field of study. rCLBack
then, you could get all of us in the field into a single room. I
remember the teasing from my particle physics colleagues that real
physics is done at accelerators. Today, opinions have changed. We have
begun to explore the early universe, the original accelerator. The
fields of particle physics and cosmology have been joined.rCY

Particle physicists, who are used to measuring miniscule signals from
the interactions of elementary particles, helped ramp up the precision
of cosmological measurements, Perlmutter noted.

rCLGeorge came from particle physics and along with several others brought
a can-do style of experimental design to bear on cosmological questions,
where they were working at more and more extreme conditions of size and energy,rCY Perlmutter said. rCLThe drive for greater and greater precision
to actually see the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, in
some ways, led the way in precision cosmology.rCY

In 1974, he submitted a proposal to NASA to build a satellite to get the
DMR instrument above the atmosphere to search for, measure and map even smaller temperature fluctuations, joining many competitors. His proposal
was combined with two others and he began collaborating with Mather at NASArCOs Goddard Space Flight Center, who served as project director.
Fifteen years later, the COBE satellite was launched. SmootrCOs team at Berkeley Lab involved more than 40 people, while the COBE satellite
project included an estimated 1,000 individuals

After Smoot announced the discovery of the CMB anisotropies in 1992, he continued to work on experiments to refine the measurements, including
as a collaborator on a third generation CMB anisotropy observatory, the
Planck satellite. These experiments have refined maps of the CMB to the
point that they now mark the first notch in a rCLcosmic rulerrCY used to measure the history of an expanding universe driven by dark energy.

a smiling bearded man sitting in an auditorium
George Smoot at the press conference following his selection as
co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Peg Skorpinski for UC Berkeley

He also helped found various research institutes around the world,
including in South Korea, Spain and France. At APC in Paris, Smoot
played an instrumental role in the founding of the Paris Center for Cosmological Physics and the opening of the endowment fund rCLPhysics of
the UniverserCY to attract top postdocs, according to the centerrCOs website.

He took a keen interest in educating the younger generation, founding
the rCLTeaching the UniverserCY program for secondary school teachers. He
also created an internationally popular MOOC (Massive Open Online
Course) called rCLGravity!rCY with Pierre Bin|-truy.

Smoot also collaborated with journalist Keay Davidson to write a general-audience book, rCLWrinkles in TimerCY (1994), about the COBE teamrCOs work.

Among his awards were the 2006 Gruber Prize, given jointly with Mather,
the 2003 Einstein Medal of SwitzerlandrCOs Albert Einstein Society, the
1995 Lawrence Award from the U.S. Department of Energy, the 1993 Kilby
Award and the 1991 NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. He
was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Smoot leaves behind a sister, Sharon Smoot Bowie, of New London, New Hampshire, two nieces, and his partner, N||ra Csisz|ir of Paris.


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