The Nobel Prize for Physics was split three ways this year: one theoretical cosmologist and (as a duo) two observational astronomers. Theory and observation nicely balanced out, like matter and anti-matter, each getting half the prize money. That meant that the astronomers each got one-quarter of the money. James Peebles, then, the theoretician, was rewarded for his "theoretical discoveries on physical cosmology." He has worked on the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, etc., and has written influential textbooks teaching the future aspirants to be Nobel-Prize-level Physicists what all of those phrases mean. I've never taken the courses that use such textbooks, so I won't try to say any more, except that Peebles, a Canadian, is widely credited with turning the "Big Bang" from a speculative and somewhat woolly concept into something precise and quantitative. The more interesting half of the award, to my mind, went to the founders of a new b...
