Robert Dicke; Theorized That Big Bang ‘Echo’ Still Resonates

Robert Dicke, who theorized that an “echo” still resonates from the Big Bang that created the universe, has died. He was 80.

Dicke died Tuesday of complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Dicke, the first Albert Einstein University Professor of Science at Princeton University, challenged Einstein’s general theory of relativity and conducted numerous experiments in gravity.

His challenges to Einstein ultimately proved unsuccessful, but his theory on the Big Bang echo was shown to be valid.

He was an early believer in the theory that the universe began with a sudden burst and argued that a microwave echo of that event was still resonating.

Dicke was building a radio antenna to test his theory when two other investigators discovered the echo by accident. Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1978 for their discovery. Some physicists thought that Dicke had been unfairly excluded.

“Since Nobel Prizes are given only for discoveries, not interpretations, Dicke received only the admiration of his colleagues,” solar astronomer Jack Zirker wrote in a 1994 article in the journal Mercury.

Dicke disputed Einstein’s general theory of relativity, saying that more precise observations were needed to detect some of solar gravity’s deflection of starlight that had skirted the eclipsed sun.

Among these were measurements of the moon’s orbit by laser beams reflected back to Earth. Similar observations were made of distant stars and quasars. Early results that seemed to back Dicke were finally refuted, however.

Dicke held at least 50 patents, 35 of them in radar. During World War II, he developed a radiometer that was able to detect very weak radio waves.

Dicke’s books included “Introduction to Quantum Mechanics,” “Theoretical Significance of Experimental Relativity” and “Gravitation and the Universe.”

Survivors include his wife, Annie; a daughter; and two sons.