In late 1979, while on sabbatical from Cornell University, Alan Guth made a theoretical discovery that changed the field of astrophysics. That discovery was the concept of an inflationary universe, a hypothesis that describes what happened in the first few moments after the creation of the universe. The inflationary hypothesis solved some of the critical problems that had long troubled cosmologists and suggested some exciting new directions for theoretical and experimental research. Guth's work was so impressive that he soon had a number of job offers to consider, one of which was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Guth accepted the position in 1980 and has since become the institution's Jerrold Zacharias Professor of Physics.

Alan Harvey Guth was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on February 27, 1947, to Hyman and Elaine Cheiten Guth. He grew up in nearby Highland Park in a middle-class family. He has described his childhood...