“Big Bang” Pioneer Explodes. Okay, Ralph Alpher Actually Just Died

Posted on August 24, 2007
Filed Under Journalism, commentary |

Ralph Alpher was screwed by science. (How’s that for an opening sentence?)

Alpher was the physicist who pretty much discovered the “Big Bang” theory of how the universe (where we all live, you know?) was created. (Hint, it was NOT created by Republican conservatives…really it wasn’t.)

Basically, the idea is billions of years ago, there was this one tiny,tiny,tiny,tiny,tiny,tiny,tiny super dense point of matter—and then—BANG! The Universe is born. Far out,right? And, Alpher was the dude who figured that out in 1948.

But, scientists working for Bell Labs in 1964 confirmed Alpher’s theory and shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978.

Said Alpher in an interview years later : ” Was I hurt? Yes! How the hell did they think I’d feel?”

Well now, Alpher is dead–having never gotten that big prize.

A prime example of coming in with a bang, but going out in a whimper.

Comments

One Response to ““Big Bang” Pioneer Explodes. Okay, Ralph Alpher Actually Just Died”

  1. Dr. Victor S. Alpher on August 27th, 2007 3:32 am

    Out with a whimper? Hardly. My Dad was prolific and productive his entire life. I don’t have to prove that here–however, while working on the Big Bang theory at GWU night school he was a Physicist on contract to the Government, later at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, with GE R&D for 35 years, then retired for another career–1987 to 2004 at Union College. In his spare time he helped launch a fledgling PBS station (WMHT-TV, Albany-Schectady-Troy), worked with the Boy Scouts of America (an Eagle who was in one of FDR’s honor guards), was on a local (1960) YMCA championship volleyball team, and a sharp ping-pong player. He was a genius who graduated high school at 15, worked to help support his family managing the Roosevelt High School Theatre, got a Gregg Stenography Certificate and while working for the Director of the Carnegie Institution in 1939 or so was hired on (in one day) as a Junior Physicist…he would not give up no matter what the obstacle. He did not invent dynamite, however.

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