Scientists
Arno Penzias
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Arno Penzias, a German-American astrophysicist, was educated at the City College of New York and Columbia University, where he earned a PhD in 1962, and then joined Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. Working with Robert Wilson from 1964 to monitor radio emissions using a sensitive horn antenna originally built for satellite communication research, he detected a faint, uniform microwave signal coming from every direction in the sky that neither could explain as instrument noise, ruling out even pigeon droppings inside the antenna as a cause. Consulting with a nearby Princeton group led by Robert Dicke, who were independently building equipment to search for exactly this kind of radiation, predicted decades earlier as a relic of an early hot, dense universe, the signal was identified as the cosmic microwave background, direct evidence for the big bang. Penzias shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics with Wilson for the discovery.
Facts
Birth YearSourced to the subject's own account Birth DateSourced to the subject's own account Death DateSourced to the subject's own account Death YearSourced to the subject's own account FieldAstrophysics, radio astronomy 2 Death PlaceSourced to the subject's own accountSan Francisco, California, US 1 NationalitySourced to the subject's own account Notable WorkSourced to the subject's own accountDiscovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation 1 BirthplaceSourced to the subject's own accountMunich, Bavaria, Germany 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Conducted
Member Of
Bell Labs, Institutions Penzias joined Bell Labs at Holmdel, New Jersey after his 1962 PhD, and with Robert Wilson detected the cosmic microwave background there in 1964-65.
Works In
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.