October 10, 2008: Volume 74, Number 5

Union unveils Alpher plaque in Olin rotunda

Union dedicated a bronze plaque this week in honor of Ralph Asher Alpher, a distinguished research professor of physics and astronomy and a pioneering architect of the Big Bang model for the origin of the universe. Alpher died Aug. 12, 2007 at age 86.

“Union College has been blessed with remarkable teachers and talented faculty who have become luminaries in their field,” President Stephen C. Ainlay said at the ceremony.

He compared Alpher with Charles Chandler, a pioneering chemist who developed the first analytical chemistry course at Union, and Charles Steinmetz, who taught electrical engineering and applied physics and also was a leading General Electric engineer.

The plaque is on the east wall of the F.W. Olin Center rotunda, an area which, with the completion of the Peter Irving Wold Science and Engineering Center, will be “a major thoroughfare for students and faculty from the sciences, engineering and liberal arts,” Ainlay said.

Rebecca Koopmann, associate professor of physics and former student of Alpher, recalled him as a teacher, mentor, colleague and friend who had a gentle demeanor and a keen sense of justice.

Harriet Lebetkin, Alpher’s daughter, said, “My father was proud of his association with Union. Education was always important to him.”

Samuel Wait Jr., president of the board of trustees of Dudley Observatory, called Alpher “a brilliant human being who could talk on any topic... he was a pleasure to work with.” Wait related the time that Alpher helped move boxes and other paraphernalia during a move of the observatory. “The person who  got his hands dirty as much as anybody else was Ralph,” he said.

Alpher taught at Union from 1986 to 2004 and was director of the Dudley Observatory. He also spent more than 30 years at the GE Research and Development Center in Niskayuna.

In 1948, as a young doctoral student, he wrote the first mathematical model for the creation of the universe and predicted the discovery of cosmic background radiation that proves the Big Bang theory.

Hundreds of people showed up at George Washington University for his dissertation defense, but the work of Alpher and his colleagues went largely unrecognized. In 1965, two radio astronomers in New Jersey who were tuning their equipment stumbled on proof of Alpher’s background radiation and were eventually awarded the Nobel Prize.

While the Nobel Prize eluded Alpher, he collected a host of other prestigious awards and honors, including the National Medal of Science, which is administered by the National Science Foundation and is the highest honor for science.

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