George Smoot

George Smoot
George Smoot at POVO conference in The Netherlands
Born	George Fitzgerald Smoot III (1945-02-20) February 20, 1945 (age 71) Yukon, Florida, United States
Residence	France
Nationality	American
Fields	Physics
Institutions	UC Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/Université Sorbone Paris Cité/Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor	David H. Frisch
Known for	Cosmic microwave background radiation
Notable awards	NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1992) Kilby Award (1993) American Achievement Golden Plate Award (1994) E. O. Lawrence Award (1994) Albert Einstein Medal (2003) Nobel Prize in Physics (2006) Gruber Prize (2006) Daniel Chalonge Medal (2006) Oersted Medal (2009)

George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and one of two contestants to win the US$1 million prize on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation".

This work helped further the Big Bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science." Smoot donated his share of the Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to a charitable foundation.

Currently Smoot is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, since 2010, a professor of physics at the Paris Diderot University, France and since 2016 the Helmut and Anna Pao Sohmen Professor at Large at the IAS Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In 2003, he was awarded the Einstein Medal and the Oersted Medal in 2009.

Smoot was born in Yukon, Florida. He graduated from Upper Arlington High School in Upper Arlington, Ohio, in 1962. He studied mathematics before switching to physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained dual bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics in 1966 and a Ph.D. in particle physics in 1970.