Saul Perlmutter (born September 22, 1959 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, U.S.) is a U.S. astrophysicist, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair, and head of the International Supernova Cosmology Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Perlmutter shared the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with Brian P. Schmidt and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Since 2021, he has been a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Reference to Saul Perlmutter was made on the CBS television comedy series The Big Bang Theory during the 2011 episode "The Speckerman Recurrence". In the episode, the character Sheldon Cooper watches the Nobel award ceremony on his laptop, and jealously berates Perlmutter: "Look at Dr. Saul Perlmutter up there, clutching that Nobel prize. What's the matter Saul, you afraid somebody's going to steal it? Like you stole Einstein's cosmological constant?" Then later: "Oh, now Perlmutter's shaking the King's hand. Yeah, check for your watch, Gustaf, he might have lifted it."
Perlmutter was also referenced in the 2011 episode of The Big Bang Theory, "The Rhinitis Revelation". In a conversation with his mother, Sheldon says, "I've got a treat for us tomorrow, Mom. I'm taking you to see Saul Perlmutter give a lecture about his Nobel Prize-winning work in cosmology. And the best part is, at the Q and A afterward, I've worked up a couple of Q's that will stump his sorry A." Later in the episode, Sheldon criticises the lecture and questions the decision to award Perlmutter a Nobel Prize.
