Nobel Laureate Dr. John C. Mather to present “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Understanding in the Age of Science”

Nobel Laureate Dr. John C. Mather, senior astrophysicist at

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, will present “Life,

Liberty, and the Pursuit of Understanding in the Age of Science” at  the first Ira Hamburg Memorial Lecture on

Sunday, October 13, at 12:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax
(UUCF).  The project scientist for the
James Webb Space Telescope will describe the history of the universe, from the
beginning to the end – how does the expanding universe lead to life, and where
are "we" going?  The lecture is
free.

For the past seven years UUCF has hosted a larger community
forum entitled, “Science, Reason and Religion.” 
Past speakers have included Steve Dick, former historian for NASA, and
Connie Bertka who serves at the Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory and at the
Wesley Theological Seminary. 

Dr. Mather, who received his Bachelor’s degree in physics at

Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California at

Berkeley, has been invited to discuss the exciting prospect of the James Webb telescope
and how its output will expand human knowledge about the universe in ways that
may challenge our current understanding of science and religion.  

As an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for
Space Studies (New York City), he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer (74-76), and came to GSFC to be the Study Scientist
(76-88), Project Scientist (88-98), and the Principal Investigator for the Far

IR Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE. 
He and his team showed that the cosmic microwave background radiation
has a blackbody spectrum within 50 parts per million, confirming the Big Bang
theory to extraordinary accuracy. 

The COBE team also discovered the cosmic anisotropy (hot and

cold spots in the background radiation), now believed to be the primordial

seeds that led to the structure of the universe today.  It was these findings that led to Dr. Mather
receiving the Nobel Prize in 2006.

For more information, visit www.uucf.org or contact Jerry

Poje, Ph.D. at poje2530@verizon.net.

For more about Dr. Mather: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2006/mather-bio.html

For more about the James Webb Telescope: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/