John C. Mather
John Cromwell Mather ( born August 7, 1946 in Roanoke, Virginia) is an American astrophysicist.
Mather grew up near Rutgers University in rural New Jersey, graduated from Swarthmore College ( Bachelor 1968) and later at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in 1974. He has worked all his life at NASA. Most recently, he conducted research at the Goddard Space Flight Center (since 1993 as a Senior Astrophysicist ) NASA and from 2007 was chief scientist in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. For his contribution to the study of the cosmic background radiation, he was honored for her confirmation that the spectrum of the background radiation obeys 2006, together with George F. Smoot of the Planck's law of radiation of a black body, and the discovery of the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background ( For their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation ) was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics. The measurements of the cosmic background radiation were performed by Smoot and Mather by the COBE satellite.
Since 1995 he has been involved as a scientist at the planned James Webb Space Telescope.
Since 1997 he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.