American Scientist
Alpher, the son of a building contractor,
was born in Washington D.C. In 1921. His initial interest in science was
stimulated by his English teacher, Matlide Eiker, who was also an amateur
astronomer. Alpher was studied at George Washington University, received his
B.Sc. in 1943 and got his Ph.D. in 1948. His Ph.D. research topic was nuclei
synthesis in a Big Bang universe, which was carried out under the supervision
of George Gamow. After the World War ll, he joined Applied Physics Laboratory
of Johns Hopkins University. Here he worked in varied research programme that,
besides cosmology, included cosmic ray physics and guided missile aerodynamics.
Alpher worked with George Gamow and Robert
Herman on a series of papers that sought to explain physical aspects of the Big
Bang theory of the universe. In 1948 Alpher and Gamow published the results of
their work on nucleosynthesis in the early universe. Also in 1948, Alpher
together with his colleague Robert Herman, predicted the existence of the
pervasive relic cosmic blackbody radiation. This primordial radiation was
detected by Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson in 1965 and was found to have
a temperature of 3 K.
The existence of this low temperature
radiation that permeates the entire universe is now regarded as one of the
major pieces of evidence for the validity of the Big Bang model of the
universe, thus Alpher's early cosmological work has had a profound impact
towards our understanding of the nature of the universe.
