John Mather: Nobel Laureate & Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope

The only NASA scientist to receive a Nobel Prize, John Mather served as project scientist for the team that launched COBE, the satellite that successfully recorded measurement of cosmic microwave background radiation, confirming the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy. A senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Mather specializes in infrared astronomy and cosmology. He was listed in 2007 in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2012, Time listed him again in a special issue on new space discoveries as one of the 25 most influential people in space. He is the lead project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope headed for outer space in 2018.

John Mather was a featured speaker at Smithsonian magazine’s “The Future is Here” conference on June 1. See a video of his talk below: