1945-

American physicist who was the chief scientist of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. COBE measured variations in the microwave background radiation of the universe, the afterglow of the "Big Bang." The results, released in 1992, showed that the background radiation had a temperature of 2.7°K—just above absolute zero—and contained small variations (around one part in one hundred thousand) that provided the strongest support ever of the Big Bang theory.