Her son, David Penzias, said the cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Penzias, along with his Bell Labs colleague astronomer Robert W. Wilson, conducted groundbreaking research that is widely considered to be fundamental to one of the landmark discoveries of modern science. . Their efforts supported current theories about the origin and development of the entire universe and everything in it.
For research that ultimately won them a Nobel Prize, Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson built and operated a highly sensitive radio telescope. By doing so, they describe the faint radiation that permeates the universe, what many scientists think is the radiation produced by the great explosion known as the Big Bang that set the universe in motion.
The atoms and molecules that make up the universe are made up of particles that themselves carry charged particles. During motion, charged particles can generate electromagnetic radiation.
Light is just one of many forms of such radiation. It has long been collected by optical telescopes from distant places on Earth and in the sky. However, radiation at other frequencies and wavelengths that cannot be detected by the eye can be collected, detected, and amplified by so-called radio telescopes.
Such devices are similar to optical devices, but they detect radiation at other frequencies and collect information not available with optical telescopes. Antennas are similar to those that can receive television or radio signals and act as signal-gathering lenses or mirrors for these telescopes.
Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson’s discovery came about when they pointed their instruments at the sky and detected a mysterious and unexplained electromagnetic background that at first appeared to the world of microwave technology as just noise.
Wilson and Dr. Penzias made their famous discovery in 1964 at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. They pointed their antennae shaped like giant stylized horns toward the sky. And even they were surprised by what they found.
The mysterious radiation they collected from space in the form of microwave signals did not come from one small region of space, as was thought. Instead, it came from everywhere. Radiation permeated the universe, even though it is weak and no longer possesses the enormous energy that once characterized the universe.
Their discoveries helped dispel the long-held view that the universe was calm and unchanging, known as steady-state theory, and led to the widespread adoption of the more dynamic and dramatic Big Bang theory. The Nobel Prize winner praised them for their “discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation.” (A third scientist, Pyotr Kapitsa of the Moscow Academy of Sciences, also shared the prize that year for an unrelated discovery related to low-temperature physics.)
Strangely and interestingly, the same cosmic signal that led to Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson’s discovery has been detected and detectable to some extent before.
Scientists say that on original terrestrial TV, signals from space could be heard at least in part in the hissing, crackling static that could be witnessed after going off air overnight or on unused channels. It is said that it was formed.
An initial response to the mystery of the origin of the microwave background was to consider all possible sources of these external signals (terrestrial and interstellar) and exclude signals that were shown not to meet the necessary criteria. was.
Eventually, scientists came to accept this penetrating microwave energy as a vestige of the Big Bang, a faint and perhaps cryptic message from the time of creation, thought to be more than 13 billion years old. became.
In an episode that illustrates an often mundane aspect of scientific research, Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson noted that pigeon droppings have been repeatedly found in sensitive areas of the antennae. This deviation from the sterile perfection of their equipment, along with other possibilities, was rightly ruled out as a contributor to some kind of scatological, but mystical background.
Arno Penzias was born on April 26, 1933 in Munich. His father owned a leather wholesale business, providing his family with what Dr. Penzias described as a comfortable middle-class life. His mother was a Catholic and her husband had converted to Judaism.
His family was sent to the Polish border in 1938 as part of a Nazi plan to deport Polish Jews who did not have German passports. He said his family missed the deadline by an hour at the border and were turned away because they couldn’t accept any more migrants.
The family believed it may have saved their lives. When the father was ordered to leave within six months, he began arranging for his sons to leave for England as part of a kindergarten transport program to rescue German-Jewish children.
When he left home in 1939, six-year-old Arno said he said in German to his younger brother, “Jetzt sind wir allein,” or “Now we are alone.”
Soon after, the family was reunited in England, and in December 1939 they sailed for the United States on the ship that their father had had the foresight to book 18 months earlier. The next month, they settled in the Bronx, where his parents became apartment managers. His father then worked in a carpentry factory at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his mother cleaned houses and sewed in a coat factory.
“Arno was always a thinker and very ambitious,” his father told the Palm Beach Post after his son won the Nobel Prize. He recalled finding out on his own that Arno was eligible to attend Brooklyn Technical High School, known for its science and engineering programs. Arno commuted three hours a day from the Bronx to school, walking and taking the subway. “He just thought [school] He will give more,” the father said. “The trip meant nothing to him.”
Arno became a naturalized citizen in 1946 and added the American name Alan, as he liked to be called, to his middle name. At the behest of his father, he studied chemistry, hoping to earn a rich living in the field of engineering. However, during his first year at the tuition-free City University of New York, he became bored with chemistry, so he turned to physics.
“Physics was a humble thing back then,” he told The New Yorker. “This was before Sputnik. …The older kids seemed to be drawn to it for aesthetic reasons. For those reasons, I wasn’t really interested in it at first, but as I studied it I realized it was something I liked. What we found was that the competition was very fierce.”
He graduated in 1954, then spent two years in the Army Signal Corps researching radar, earning a master’s degree in physics in 1958 and a doctorate four years later from Columbia University.
Much of his early work, including service in the Army, involved microwave research and technology, which set him on the path to a Nobel Prize. Columbia University’s physics department was deeply involved in microwave research, with a faculty that included some of the biggest names in the field. Under one of his mentors at Columbia University, Charles Townes, inventor of the maser, he immersed himself in research in microwave and radio astronomy.
In 1961, Dr. Penzias joined Bell Laboratories, a research center maintained by the former Bell System, where he studied the basic science behind technologies such as microwaves, electronic signals, and modern telecommunications.
Holmdel’s famous laboratory had a unique facility that he said was “the ideal location” to finish the radio astronomy observations he started but never completed during his Columbia doctoral studies. he said.
For example, Bell already had a large antenna suitable for radio astronomy. The antenna was intended for use in communications with Earth satellites. Dr. Penzias described it as a great tool for pursuing his interests, and he now has access to it as well. He remained with Bell Corporation for his 37 years, working in fields such as interstellar chemistry before being promoted to management positions.
In the mid-1990s, he moved to Silicon Valley, where he became prominent as a thinker on the development of new technologies and an advisor to start-up companies.
His first marriage to Ann Barras ended in divorce. She married Silicon Valley executive Shelly Levitt in 1996. In addition to his wife of San Francisco, survivors include three children from his first marriage, David Penzias of Newton, Mass., Mindy Dirks of Monte Sereno, Calif., and Santa Cruz, Calif.; Includes Rabbi L. Shifra Weispenzias. two stepchildren, Carson Levitt and Victoria Zaroff, both of San Francisco; siblings; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Dr. Penzias published a book in 1989, “ideas and information” may seem particularly relevant at a time when interest in topics such as artificial intelligence is increasing. “Essentially,” he wrote in his Nobel Prize biography, “this book is about computers as both great tools for humans and terrifying exemplars of what we humans know as intelligence.” In other words, “If you don’t want to be replaced by a machine, don’t try to act like one!”