I realize I’m 7 years late but I want to share this interesting medal I saw today. This is the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics currently located in the lobby of NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.
The informational plaque for the medal contains the following information:
NASA’s Dr. John C. Mather (left) received the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics on December 10, 2006, the first NASA employee to be so honored. The Nobel Prize is presented each year to recognize individuals for their outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, Economics, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine.
Dr. Mather shares the prize with Dr. George F. Smoot of the University of California at Berkeley for their collaborative work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission. They and the COBE team proved that the key predictions of the Big Bang theory of the universe are matched by the extremely precise observations of the residual heat radiation from those earliest times. Launched November 19, 1989, COBE involved more than 1500 team members at NASA and Ball Aerospace .
The entire NASA family congratulates Dr. Mather’s tremendous accomplishment and the COBE team for their unprecedented work in furthering the understanding of our universe.
