Many contributed to the Big Bang model of cosmology, but it was Ralph Alpher, George Gamow and Robert Herman who were the geniuses who introduced it to science. Alpher especially was involved in two scientific papers that:
1) Introduced it as a theory (with Gamow)
2) Predicted the CMB- cosmic microwave background (with Herman)
The CMB wouldn't be discovered until 12 years after these publications.
I would like to state how remarkable it is that they predicted the CMB observation- something that virtually every astronomer at the time believed couldn't be detected. Their work was not taken seriously even though they spent a lot of energy trying to push it through. The prediction of the CMB would become the lynch pin that finally convinced astronomers that the Big Bang theory was the strongest cosmological origin theory on record.
If this had been a discovery of Einstein's, perhaps they'd have listened more, or gotten people to find the CMB faster. Because of their reputation, there weren't any radiologists willing to pursue its detection.
Alpher in particular was a man robbed of such glorious merit as the discoverer of the Big Bang. His work on its introduction was integral, as he did most of the number crunching to make it a viable theory*. Then to execute the calculations for something as amazingly chaotic as the universe's first 300,000 years- up until the point of recombination, when light became transparent and the CMB was born- is an achievement that should rival Einstein's relativity or Hubble's discovery of the universe's expansion. Today we should be lauding his work as much as we do the others, but apparently he did not have enough media attraction to garner the kind of celebrity his predecessors did.
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This is a strange trend in science, where suddenly collaborative research creates paradigm shifts instead of individuals. It started in about the 1950s, when the second paper came out, as collective research strengthened in science and the pioneer work of the lone maverick died out. That is why there are no more famous scientists, for all the glory of discovery is now shared. It appears to have had an unintended deceleration effect, as the rate of major discoveries has waned in recent decades. We sometimes forget that glory motivates brilliant minds to share their ideas, perhaps more than any other. Alpher's snub may be the starting point of a detrimental trend in science that binds us to the present more than it progresses us forward. Just as we have stabilized in ultra-capitalist human systems, the status quo of scientific theory keeps us chained to mediocre research.
*Singh, Simon. 2004. Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe. Harper Collins Publishers: New York.
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