Alpher Obituaries

I don't know if it's official enough for Wikipedia, but the college has posted a nice obituary for Ralph Alpher:

Alpher taught at Union from 1986 to 2004 and was director of the Dudley Observatory. He also spent more than 30 years at the General Electric Research and Development Center in Niskayuna.

In 1948, as a young doctoral student, he wrote the first mathematical model for the creation of the universe and predicted the discovery of cosmic background radiation that proves the Big Bang theory.

Hundreds of people showed up at George Washington University for his dissertation defense, but the work of Alpher and his colleagues went largely unrecognized. In 1965, two radio astronomers in New Jersey who were tuning their equipment stumbled on proof of Alpher's background radiation and were eventually awarded the Nobel Prize.

There's also a long and detailed obituary in the Washington Post (Alpher's thesis work was done at George Washington University in the D of C, which gives him a local connection).