Finding Aid to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Physics Division oversize scientific files of George Smoot, 1989

Selected Search Terms

These papers have been indexed in the International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences (ICOS) using the following terms. Those seeking related materials should search under these terms.

Historical Note

The laboratory was founded as the University of California Radiation Laboratory in 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, a University of California Berkeley physicist who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator that opened the door to high-energy physics. It is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory, operated by the University of California. The name of the laboratory has evolved since its founding: Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (1931-1958), the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1959-1995), and currently the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1995-present).

Astrophysicist and cosmologist George Smoot (Ph.D., MIT, 1970) worked as professor at the University of California Berkeley, and cosmologist and astrophysicsist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1970- ). In 2006, Smoot co-received the Nobel Prize for Physics along with John Mather for discoveries in cosmic microwave background radiation.

Scope and Contents of Collection

These notebooks document George Smoot's work at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), including his work on the Cosmic Background Radiation Experiment (COBE) for which Smoot won the nobel prize for physics in 2006. The collection contains three oversized notebooks related to the COBE project.