Talk:James Gunn (astronomer)

The article should mention the fact Gunn was overlooked for the Nobel Prize in Physics
In 1974, Gunn and Allan Sandage independently announced in the same week that the universe was infinite and would not collapse on itself from gravity. Then in 1975, Gunn and Beatrice Tinsley published in Nature a paper titled "An accelerating universe" which concluded that not only is the universe expanding, it is expanding at an accelerating rate. This was shocking news but many in the scientific world did not immediately embrace the conclusion. In 1998, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, Adam Riess made observations of distant supernovaes which confirmed Gunn and Tinsley's earlier discovery that the universe expansion was accelerating. The scientific community immediately embraced this conclusion, possibly because of the earlier work by Gunn and Tinsley. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess. It seems a shame that Sandage, Gunn and Tinsley were overlooked since they reached the same conclusions 24 years earlier. RonCram (talk) 14:31, 14 July 2012 (UTC)