Wilson, Robert Woodrow

Wilson, Robert Woodrow, 1936–, American radio astronomer, b. Houston, Tex., Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1962. In 1964 he and co-researcher Arno Penzias began monitoring radio waves in the Milky Way galaxy with a radio telescope and discovered cosmic background radiation. Their discovery has been used as evidence in support of the “big bang” theory that the universe was created by a giant explosion billions of years ago (see cosmology). Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics with Peter Kapitza.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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