NASA scientist Dr. Mather shows some of the earliest data from the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft during a press conference held on October 6, 2006, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. John Cromwell Mather (born August 7, 1946) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) with George Smoot. Mather is a senior astrophysicist at the U.S. space agency's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2007, he was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. In October, 2012, he was listed again by Time magazine in a special issue on New Space Discoveries as one of 25 most influential people in space.