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Nobel Alumnus Wins $1M on “Smarter than a 5th Grader”

  • Nancy DuVergne Smith
  • slice.mit.edu
  • 7

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George Smoot greets fifth graders.
George Smoot greets fifth graders.

American astrophysicist George Smoot ’66, PhD ’71 won $1M on the TV game show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" on Sept. 18. He was only the second person to win $1M on the show and the first man to do so.

Of course, this is not the first prize he’s won. Smoot was awarded a Physics Nobel Prize in 2006. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) with John C. Mather that led to the measurement "...of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation." This work helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science."

And he even had fun winning a million dollars. Watch the episode. His final question? "What’s the location of Acadia National Park?"

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Comments

Patrice Allen

Tue, 09/22/2009 12:29pm

Is he related to the Oliver Smoot '62 of 'the smoot' measurement fame?

Dave M

Thu, 09/24/2009 4:58pm

Wikipedia says he's a cousin (presumably first cousin) of Oliver Smoot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_R._Smoot

Oliver was president of the American National Standards Institute, which among other things, establishes units of length.

nancyds

Tue, 09/22/2009 4:05pm

No - George is a distant cousin, I gather.

In fact, there are eight Smoots listed in the online alumni directory.

Emily Wallis

Thu, 09/24/2009 12:50pm

Hmmm... A Nobel-prize-winning MIT-grad is smarter than a 5th-grader. I should hope so!

What does this say about our pop culture? And what would the Alumni Association have said if he _hadn't_ won?

laure

Tue, 09/22/2009 3:50am

random fact: he's a cousin to our Harvard bridge Smoot!

Brandon Rigney

Mon, 09/21/2009 11:28pm

My first reaction was that maybe this is the Smoot of Tech fame whose body length was used many years ago to measure the Mass Ave. Bridge in "Smoots". Since there was no mention in the article, maybe this is not the guy

cbognet

Mon, 09/21/2009 6:41pm

Awesome - thanks for posting this. I watched the whole episode :)

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