IAS Professor-at-Large
Prof George Smoot was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006, jointly with Prof John Mather, for their work that led to the “discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”. This work helped further the Inflationary Universe and the Big Bang theory of the universe.
Prof Smoot received his Bachelor degrees in mathematics and physics and his PhD in physics in 1970 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1970. He is also Chair of the Endowment Fund "Physics of the Universe" of Paris Center for Cosmological Physics.
Prof Smoot was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has been honored by several universities worldwide with doctorates or professorships. He was also the recipient of the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1991), Lawrence Award from the US Department of Energy (1995), Einstein Medal from Albert Einstein Society (2003), Daniel Chalonge Medal from the International School of Astrophysics (2006) and Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2006).
Prof Smoot is an author of more than 500 science papers and is also co-author (with Keay Davidson) of the popularized scientific book Wrinkles in Time (Harper, 1994) that elucidates cosmology and the discovery of NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer. A great teacher and a keen advocate of popular science, Prof Smoot received the Oersted Medal in 2009 for his notable contributions to the teaching of physics.
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| Research Areas |
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Development of new photon detectors: 1) fast quantum detectors SiPM and 2) very sensitive cryogenic energy resolving detectors. Goal to make cameras for fast astronomy and extremely sensitive detector arrays for things like CMB and IR/Optical observations. Processing and Analysis of observations including CMB, galaxy surveys, and others. |
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| Representative Publications |
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G. Smoot, M. Gorenstein, and R. A. Muller, “Detection of anisotropy in the cosmic blackbody radiation,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 39, 898 (1977).
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J. Mather, et al., “A preliminary measurement of the cosmic microwave background spectrum by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite,” Ap. J. Lett.354, L37 (1990).
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A. T. Lee, P. Ade, A. Balbi, J. Bock, J. Borrill, A. Boscaleri, P. De Bernardis, P. G. Ferreira, S. Hanany, V. V. Hristov, A. H. Jaffe, P. D. Mauskopf, C. B. Netterfield, E. Pascale, B. Rabii, P. L. Richards, G. F. Smoot, R. Stompor, C. D. Winant, and J. H. P. Wu, “A high spatial resolution analysis of the MAXIMA-1 cosmic microwave background anisotropy data,” The Astrophysical Journal 561, L1-L6 (2001), astro-ph/0104459.
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Probing Cosmic Strings with Satellite CMB measurements E. Jeong, Carlo Baccigalupi, G. F. Smoot, E. Jeong, G. F. Smoot The Validity of the Cosmic String Pattern Search with the Cosmic Microwave Background ApJL. 661, L1, 200
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I. F. M. Albuquerque and G. F. Smoot, “Measuring atmospheric neutrino oscillations with neutrino telescopes,” Phys. Rev.D64, 53008 (2001), hep-ph/0102078.
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“My Einstein Suspenders,” in My Einstein: Essays by Twenty-four of the World's Leading Thinkers on the Man, His Work, and His Legacy. John Brockman, ed. Pantheon, 2006.
Full Publication List [HKUST Scholarly Publications] |
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