2006 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John C. Mather and George F. Smoot. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 3 October 2006.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

John C. Mather was born in 1946 in Roanoke, the United States, and is affiliated with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt. George F. Smoot was born in 1945 in Yukon, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley.

Why it matters

Measurements made with NASA's COBE satellite, launched in 1989, supported the Big Bang theory and found tiny variations in the radiation left over from the early universe, the seeds of the galaxies we see today.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.