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Smoot wins Nobel Prize!

As one of those MIT alumni who lived on the Boston side of the river, I walked across the Harvard bridge at least four times a day for too many years. And, of course, know all too well that it's 364.4 Smoots plus an ear. When I heard that George Smoot and John Mather won the nobel prize today, I was excited to think about how the next painting of the smoot marks would be changed this year. Before, getting too wound up in this I thought to check the references a bit, and discovered that George Smoot wasn't the LCA freshman whose height was used to measure the bridge, but it was Oliver R. Smoot (could he be a relation?). While Oliver didn't win a Nobel prize, his career was most appropriate. He was chairman of the American National Standards Institute from 2001-2002 and President of ISO from 2003-2004. As for George Smoot's Nobel wining accomplishment, the image of the background radiation from the big bang that he produced, when explained to a layman like me truly inspires awe. In many ways, it is the photograph of creation!

Posted at 11:08PM Oct 03, 2006 by rezippel in Personal  |