University Library News

Dr. John Mather, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, will be presenting the “History of the Universe from Beginning to End” on Tuesday, October 23 at 1:30PM in the Student Center Speaker’s Auditorium. Dr. Mather, along with fellow astrophysicist George Smoot, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on cosmic microwave background radiation (radiation left over from the Big Bang). He is currently the project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, which will study some of the most distant objects in the universe after its planned launch in 2018.

Before seeing him talk, take a look at some of Dr. Mather’s publications:

Bennett, C.L., Boggess, N.W., Cheng, E.S., Hauser, M.G., Kelsall, T., Mather, J.C., … Wright, E.L. (1993). Scientific results from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 90(11): 4766-4773.

Fixsen, D.J. & Mather, J.C. (2002). The spectral results of the far-infrared absolute spectrophotometer instrument on COBE. The Astrophysical Journal, 581, 817-822.

Ipatov, S. I., & Mather, J. C. (2003). Migration of Trans-Neptunian Objects to the Terrestrial Planets.

Kashlinsky, A. A., Arendt, R. G., Mather, J. J., & Moseley, S. H. (2005). Tracing the first stars with fluctuations of the cosmic infrared background. Nature, 438(7064), 45-50.

If you can’t make the talk, you can watch a video of Dr. Mather giving an earlier lecture on this topic at Swarthmore College in 2008.