Professor John Cromwell Mather (born 7 August 1946 in Roanoke, Virginia) is an American astrophysicist and cosmologist. He was given the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on COBE satellite with George Smoot.  The COBE satellite measures black holes and cosmic radiation. 

This work supported the big-bang theory of the universe beginning. It made cosmology much more accurate. The Nobel Prize committee said: "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science."

Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2007, Mather was listed in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

Education and early work 
 1964 Newton High School, Newton, New Jersey
 1968 B.Sc. (Physics), Swarthmore College
 1974 Ph.D. (Physics), University of California, Berkeley
 1974-76 (NRC Postdoctoral Fellow), Columbia University Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Work with COBE 
After being awarded his Ph.D. Professor Mather went to work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University. He started the work on COBE there (1974-1976). More than 1,000 researchers, engineers and other workers made the COBE satellite. John Mather was in control of them all and created the technology for measuring the cosmic radiation. George Smoot had the job of measuring small changes in the temperature of the radiation.

Professor Mather and John Boslough wrote all about the COBE teams work in a book called The Very First Light.

Awards 
 1964-68  Swarthmore College Open Scholarship (honorary)
 1967 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, 30th place nationwide
 1968-70 NSF Fellowship and honorary Woodrow Wilson Fellowship 
 1970-74 Fellow, Hertz Foundation 
 1974-76  Postdoctoral Fellow, NRC
 1990 NASA GSFC John C. Lindsay Memorial Award
 1991 Rotary National Space Achievement Award
 1991 National Air and Space Museum Trophy 
 1992 Aviation Week and Space Technology Laurels for Space/Missiles
 1993 Discover Magazine Technology Award finalist 
 1993 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Science Award
 1993 American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics
 1994 Fellow, Goddard Space Flight Center
 1994 Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Swarthmore College
 1995 City of Philadelphia John Scott Award
 1996 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Rumford Prize
 1996 Fellow, American Physical Society
 1997 Aviation Week and Space Technology Hall of Fame
 1997 Member, National Academy of Sciences
 1998 Marc Aaronson Memorial Prize
 1998 Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 1999 Franklin Institute Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics 
 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers George W. Goddard Award
 2006 Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation Prize in Cosmology 
 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
 2007 Fellow, SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Related pages
 James Webb Space Telescope

References

Other websites 
 John C. Mather biography at the Goddard Space Flight Center
 Interview with John Mather from the SPIE Newsroom
 Berkeley lab article
 Mather's group's data that led to the Nobel Prize in symmetry magazine.
 John C. Mather on the Infancy of the Universe at the National Academy of Sciences 

1946 births
Living people
American astronomers
American astrophysicists
Scientists from Virginia
People from Roanoke, Virginia
American Nobel Prize winners