From the August 2007 issue

Alpher, Herman, and the CMB

In 1950, two young physicists estimated the cosmic microwave background's temperature — and nearly got it right.
By | Published: August 27, 2007 | Last updated on May 18, 2023
George Gamow’s agile mind was not content to restrict itself to nuclear physics. In the 1940s, he and his colleagues, including Ralph Alpher, probed the possible conditions of an early universe that started from a hot soup of radiation and subatomic particles.