John Cromwell Mather is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite with George Smoot. 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." Mather is a senior astrophysicist at the U.S. space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2007, Mather was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. In October, 2012, he was listed again by Time magazine in a special issue on New Space Discoveries as one of 25 most influential people in space. Mather is also the project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, a space telescope to be launched to L2 no earlier than 2018. 

August 7th, 1946 in Roanoke (Age 77)