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Alan Harvey Guth (born February 27, 1947) is a physicist and cosmologist. Guth has researched elementary particle theory (and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe).

As a junior particle physicist, Guth first developed the idea of inflation in 1979 at Stanford University after attending a Big Bang lecture by Robert Dicke. In 1981, Guth formally proposed the idea of cosmic inflation, the idea that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion that was driven by a negative vacuum energy density (positive vacuum pressure). The results of the WMAP mission in 2006 made the case for cosmic inflation very compelling.

Guth is the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He won the Eddington Medal in 1996.

Quote

• "It is said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch". — A. H. Guth

Publications

• Guth, Alan, "The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins". 1998. ISBN 0-201-32840-2

External links, references, and resources

• Alan H. Guth, MIT Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics webpage
• Alan Guth - "Eternal inflation: Successes and questions"
• The Growth of Inflation, Symmetry magazine, December 2004/January 2005

• 1947 births
• Living people
• American astronomers
• Physicists
• Cosmologists
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty