Nobel laureate George Smoot, who researched the universe's origins at UC Berkeley, dies at 80

The Nobel Prize winner, Dr. George Smoot, who has conducted revolutionary research on the origins of the universe, has died. He was 80 years old. The University of California in Berkeley, says that Smoot died on September 18 in Paris from a heart attack. With John Match of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics for finding the fundamental influence which ultimately pinned the theory of Big Bang from the start of the universe. Smoot joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shortly after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. Laboratory director Mike Witherell said Smoot “spent a distinguished career to discover the secrets of the universe”.