George Gamow was a Ukrainian-born American nuclear physicist, cosmologist, and writer who formulated an early theory of the hot Big Bang with Ralph Alpher in 1948, and worked on quantum mechanics, stellar evolution, and genetic theory (being the first to propose a coding scheme for DNA in 1954). Gamow's popular books included the Mr. Tompkins series (1939–1967), One, Two, Three ... Infinity (1947), and The Creation of the Universe (1952; revised 1961).