Ralph Alpher, cosmologist and distinguished research
professor of physics, is an Eagle Scout. And he can prove it.
A prodigious learner by all accounts, the young Alpher
had collected enough merit badges to attain Scouting's highest rank by
the time he was just 14. That was in 1934.
After that, he left Scouting behind and went on to other
things: college, marriage, and a storied career in cosmology. One of the
pioneer architects of the Big Bang model for the origin of the universe,
he and his colleagues predicted the existence of background radiation that
would prove the model. For that, he earned some of science's most
coveted prizes.
Meanwhile, proof of his accomplishments in Scouting had
all but disappeared. His merit badges and citations were discarded by a
relative during some overzealous housecleaning, and fires at two separate
Boy Scout organizations had destroyed the records.
But Alpher's son, Victor, himself an Eagle Scout, was
determined to have his father recognized for one of his earliest
accomplishments. Buoyed by visibility from a recent feature article on the
cosmologist in Discover magazine, the younger Alpher convinced
officials at National Boy Scout headquarters in Irvine, Texas, to do some
research.
Somewhere in the records was evidence that Alpher had,
among other things, been a member of the Boy Scout honor guard at FDR's
first inaugural. “I sat in his box and got to shake the man's
hand,” recalls Alpher.
Today, some 66 years after the fact, Alpher has a
certificate declaring him an Eagle Scout in good standing through the year
2005.