Robert Woodrow Wilson

“This longer-than-expected wavelength would mean that the universe has been expanding more slowly than we thought.”

“The universe had a beginning, and it was a very hot beginning.”

“Our whole story is an example of the unpredictable nature of basic research.”

“Certainly, the story of the cosmic background radiation is a textbook case of serendipity in science.”

“We really had no idea what it was, and the first thing we had to do was to make sure that it wasn't in our instrument.”

“The real world is not a simple place, and I think we have to be able to live with some of that uncertainty.”

“Had we been more expert in radio astronomy, we might have been more skeptical and not followed up on the initial anomaly.”

“What we were hearing was the sound of the birth of the universe.”