He has been called one of the “fathers of modern cosmology.” In awarding him the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that his work forms “the basis of our contemporary ideas about the universe.” He arrived at Princeton University in 1958 as a graduate student and — more than five decades later — he remains at the university as the Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Emeritus.
Growing up in Manitoba, Canada, James Peebles was always curious about how things worked. As a child, he loved taking clocks apart and putting them back together, and watching the valves — the driving rods — move back and forth on a steam locomotive.
When he was awarded the Nobel Prize, he advised young people entering the field of science not to chase awards, but to pursue what makes them curious. “You should enter it for the love of the science,” he said at a news conference. “You should enter science because you are fascinated by it. That’s what I did.”
The author of several books that are widely considered classics in the field, including Cosmology’s Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe, Peebles has received many awards for his pioneering work studying dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation. He said he has a “preference for underappreciated issues” and that doing research off the beaten track can always lead to another surprise.
