Dr. George Smoot, professor of Physics at the University of California Berkeley, gestures during a media conference Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2006, in Berkeley. Read more about Smoot on Berkeley NewsSmoot died on Sept. 18 in Paris of a heart attack, according to a statement Monday by UC Berkeley. He soon joined the Berkeley Lab, “where he spent a distinguished career uncovering the secrets of the universe,” lab director Mike Witherell wrote in a tribute. He used $500,000 of his Nobel money to launch the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics at UC Berkeley. He traveled the world after retiring from the Berkeley Lab in 2014, and took a keen interest in climate change.