Robert Herman. Historical portrait of the American physicist Robert Herman (born 1914). In 1948, with George Gamow and Ralph Alpher, he predicted a cosmic background radiation. This remnant energy from a Big Bang origin of the universe would permeate the entire cosmos. He and his colleagues predicted that the radiation would have cooled to a temperature of 5 Kelvin as the universe expanded. In 1964 Penzias and Wilson observed this cosmic background radiation with a temperature of around 3.5 Kelvin, providing some of the most compelling evidence for the Big Bang theory. Herman also collaborated with Alpher in work on the synthesis of elements in the early universe.