Robert W(oodrow) Wilson

Physicist and radio astronomer, born in Houston, Texas, USA. He was a fellow in radio astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (1962–3), then joined Bell Laboratories (1963). In 1964 he and his collaborator Arno Penzias detected microwave noise in the constellation Cassiopeia that proved to be residual radiation from the ‘big bang’ at the creation of the universe. For this discovery they shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics. Wilson also investigated the presence of interstellar carbon monoxide, and the composition of dark gas clouds of the Milky Way.

Robert Woodrow Wilson (born January 10, 1936) is an American astronomer.

He won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics, together with Arno Allan Penzias, for their 1964 accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation or CMB (the prize for that year was also shared by Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa for unrelated work). After removing all potential sources of noise, including pigeon droppings on the antenna, the noise was finally identified as CMB, which served as important confirmation of the Big Bang theory.

Wilson studied as an undergraduate at Rice University, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society.