John Mather

John Mather is a senior astrophysicist and senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Since the project’s start in 1995, he has led the JWST science teams. As a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Mather led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer from 1974 to 1976. He then moved to GSFC to be the study scientist from 1976 to 1988, project scientist from 1988 to 1998, and the principal investigator for the Far IR Absolute Spectrophotometer on COBE. His current research centers on building hybrid telescopes, combining equipment on the ground with starshades in space. Mather’s honors include the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics for his COBE work.