Died 2025-09-18.
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George Fitzgerald Smoot III was an American astrophysicist and cosmologist. He shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Mather "for their discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation".
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science · American astrophysicist (1945–2025) · astronomer · cosmologist · astrophysicist · physicist · university teacher · also George F. Smoot, George Smoot, George Fitzgerald Smoot III, Smoot
Born 20 February 1945 · Died 18 September 2025 · Q179572
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Died 2025-09-18.
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“But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aesthetically pleasing—a universe that we humans, with our limited perspective, will someday understand.”
Smoot appeared in a television commercial for Intuit TurboTax, advising a user of the software on what to do
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Appeared in a BBC interview of Nobel laureates, discussing the value science has to offer society
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Smoot appeared on an episode of the Fox television show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader
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Won Oersted Medal (2009).
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Awarded honorary doctorate of the University of the Mediterranean - Aix Marseille II (2007).
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Smoot donated $500,000 to fund the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, and an additional amount from his Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to the East Bay
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Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics — for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics (2006).
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Won Albert Einstein Medal (2003).
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Awarded Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award (1994).
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Won NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1992).
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That the satellite had detected tiny fluctuations in the CMB, a breakthrough in the study of the early universe
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After a delay owing to the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger
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Born 1945-02-20.
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