- 1610: Galileo
- 1676: Ole Rømer
- 1687: Isaac Newton
- 1781: William Herschel
- 1838: Friedrich Bessel
- 1861: William and Margaret Huggins
- 1912: Henrietta Leavitt
- 1917 Einstein
- 1920: Harlow Shapley
- 1929 Edwin Hubble
- 1948: Ralph Alpher
- 1949: Fred Hoyle
- 1963: Maarten Schmidt
- 1964: Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
- 1978: Vera Rubin and Kent Ford
- 1989: Margaret Geller and John Huchra
- 1992: John Mather and George Smoot
- 1995: Robert Williams
- 1998: Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt
- 2010: Wendy Freedman
1964 Activity: Listening to the Constant Hiss from Space
In 1965, the year that the CMB was discovered, a front-page story in the New York Times quoted Arno Penzias suggesting an activity that you can do today:
If you get a very good FM receiver and if you get between stations you will hear that sh-sh-sh sound. You’ve probably heard this kind of rushing sound. It’s just sort of soothing. Sometimes it’s not much different form the sound of the surf. Of the sound that you’re listening to, about one half of one percent of that noise is coming from billions of years ago.