George Smoot

George Fitzgerald Smoot III is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and one of two contestants to win the USmillion prize on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Smoot was born in Yukon, Florida. He graduated from Upper Arlington High School in Upper Arlington, Ohio, in 1962. He studied mathematics before switching to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained dual bachelors degrees in mathematics and physics in 1966 and a Ph.D. in particle physics in 1970.

Source: Wikipedia