Arno Penzias

Until his retirement in 1998, Arno Penzias was Vice President and Chief Scientist at Bell Laboratories, the Research and Development unit of Lucent Technologies. In 1978, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into one of the weightiest of all scientific questions: the origin of the universe. Dr. Penzias helped isolate the primordial celestial radio signal which lent validity to the theory of the Big Bang. A decade and a half earlier, Penzias was part of the group that developed Telstar and Echo, the United States' first communications satellites. In his role as Chief Scientist at Bell Labs, and throughout his career, Dr. Penzias continually demonstrated selfless devotion to championing the causes of science education, diversity in the workplace, and freedom from political oppression for scientists worldwide.