Physicist to Give Nobel Laureate Lecture

John C. Mather, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics, will be the featured speaker for Old Dominion University's Nobel Laureate Public Lecture Series this month. His talk is scheduled for 10 a.m. today, at the Ted Constant Convocation Center.

Later in the day, a question-and-answer session will be held at 2:30 p.m. in the River Rooms of Webb Center. Both sessions are free and open to the public.

Mather 's lecture "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize and on to James Webb Space Telescope and the Discovery of Alien Life," will explore the history of the universe, the birth of planets and stars, and the existence of other Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life.

Born in Roanoke, Va., Mather is a pioneer of NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) that was launched into space in 1989. The COBE mission has allowed unprecedented insight into the remnants of the Big Bang's radiation. Currently, Mather is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 2007, he was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

For more information about the lecture, contact Professor Amin Dharamsi in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at adharams@odu.edu.