Well-known cosmologist, Michael Turner, stated that, "The discovery of the cosmic microwave background by Penzias and Wilson transformed cosmology from being the realm of a handful of astronomers to a 'respectable' branch of physics almost overnight."

Image Courtesy of NASA.

Arno Penzias (b. 1933) was born in Munich, Germany, and his family moved to the United States to escape Nazi rule because of their Jewish heritage. He studied masers and their use in radio astronomy, a field of study started three decades before in Holmdel. He started working for Bell Labs in 1958, with the goal of wrapping up his thesis work on radio astronomy but stayed on once Rudi Kompfner hired him to work on Project Echo.

Robert Wilson (b. 1936) started at Bell Labs in 1962. He also had a background of studying masers and radio astronomy. Wilson said he wanted to work at Bell Labs because of the “atmosphere.”

Image Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center.

CMBR is the sound of the birth of our universe. The Big Bang was a rapid expansion of matter and energy creating an extremely hot universe. In the cooling process (which took 380,000 years) protons, neutrons, and electrons were able to form atoms. Then the elements of hydrogen, helium, and some lithium were brought together by gravity to shape the galaxies.

Penzias and Wilson’s discovery on May 20, 1964 would alter human knowledge of our own existence. The duo won the 1978 Nobel Prize, shared with Russian physicist Peter Kapitza.

Image Courtesy of Library of Congress, Arno A. Penzias papers.

Image Courtesy of ESA and Planck Collaboration.