Ralph Asher Alpher was an American cosmologist, best known for his pioneering work in the early 1950s on the Big Bang model including big bang nucleosynthesis and predictions of the cosmic microwave background radiation. He was born on February 3, 1921 in Washington, D.C., United States. He laid the foundations for the big-bang model, a widely held theory of the evolution of the universe, while a graduate student at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Though Alpher had set forth calculations and theoretical predictions about the origins of the universe in his doctoral dissertation, his work was not recognized when astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for a discovery that supported the big-bang model of creation. Alpher was later recognized with numerous other awards and a 2005 National Medal of Science. He died on August 12, 2007 in Austin, Texas, United States.