Alan Guth

Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1947, American physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth was smart enough to leave school a year early and go straight to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his bachelor s, master s and doctorate degrees in physics. Guth initially began evolving his notion of cosmic inflation when he was a junior scientist at Cornell in 1979. Then in 1981 he officially put forward the theory, which is now widely accepted by many scientists. The theory suggests a time prior to the Big Bang during which the universe was able to evenly disperse itself thanks to its smaller size. This model also looks to explain more clearly the conditions that brought about the incredibly fast, exponential growth of the universe. Guth has been described as the man who put the