Alan Guth

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**Alan Harvey Guth** <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">
Alan Guth at Harvard University</td></tr>
Born	27 February 1947 New Brunswick, New Jersey <tr><th>Residence</th><td>United States</td></tr><tr><th>Nationality</th><td>Image:Flag of the United States.svg American</td></tr><tr><th>Field</th><td>Cosmology, Theoretical Physics</td></tr><tr><th>Institution</th><td>Princeton Columbia Cornell SLAC MIT</td></tr><tr><th>Alma Mater</th><td>MIT</td></tr><tr><th>Academic Advisor</th><td>Francis Low</td></tr><tr><th>Known for</th><td>Cosmic inflation</td></tr><tr><th>Notable Prizes</th><td>MIT School of Science Prize for Undergraduate Teaching,<p>The Franklin Medal for Physics of the Franklin Institute,<p>Dirac Prize of the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste,<p>Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation (2004)</td></tr>

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.