Boulder, Colorado, United States. George Gamow (sometimes Gammoff; born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov; George Antonovich Gamov) was a Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist, and cosmologist. He died of liver cirrhosis: alcohol abuse, which had weakened his health. Physicist Edward Teller remembered him thus: “Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. Some right, some wrong. More often wrong than right. Always interesting. And when his idea wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t just right, it was new.” He was an early proponent and developer of Georges Lemaître’s Big Bang theory. Gamow discovered a theoretical explanation for alpha decay via quantum tunneling, invented the liquid drop model (the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus), worked on radioactive decay, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which he collectively called nucleocosmogenesis), and predicted the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation and molecular genetics. Gamow was a key figure in the development and understanding of quantum tunneling.
