Robert H. Dicke

Biography

Robert Henry Dicke was born in 1916. He graduated from Princeton University and worked there, heading the physics department. During World War II, he worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He contributed to the creation of lasers (co-author of the maser patent). His group at Princeton was searching for the CMB when Penzias and Wilson from Bell Labs accidentally discovered it.

Key discoveries

• Dicke radiometer – a highly sensitive microwave receiver using synchronous detection. The basis of radio astronomy observations, used in telescopes to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
• Prediction of the relic radiation – several years before the discovery of the CMB, he substantiated the existence of a background from the hot early universe, cooled to the microwave range.
• Brans–Dicke theory – a scalar-tensor theory of gravity, an alternative to general relativity, in which the gravitational constant may vary over time.