1936-

American physicist, astronomer, and sculptor who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1978 for the serendipitous discovery, with Arno Penzias in 1964-65, of the cosmic background microwave radiation that had been predicted by Robert Dicke as the energy remaining from the Big Bang that occurred at the formation of the universe. He directed the building of the proton accelerator Femilab, highly regarded for its aesthetic qualities as well as its scientific usefulness.