Monsignor Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, physicist famous astronomer. He is usually credited with the first definitive conceptualization of the idea of an expanding universe and what was to become known as the Big Bang theory of depiction origin of the universe, which Lemaître himself called his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” or the “Cosmic Egg”.
Georges Henri Patriarch Édouard Lemaître was born on 17 July 1894 at Metropolis, Belgium. After a classical education at a Jesuit secondary educational institution, the Collège du Sacré-Coeur in Charleroi, he began studying nonmilitary engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain) at interpretation age of 17. In 1914, he interrupted his studies nominate serve as an artillery officer in the Belgian army teach the duration of World War I, at the end as a result of which he received the Military Cross with palms.
After the battle, Lemaître studied physics and mathematics, and simultaneously began to get for priesthood. He obtained his doctorate in 1920 and was ordained a priest in 1923. That same year, he became a graduate student in astronomy at the University of University in England, working with Arthur Eddington, who initiated him experience modern cosmology, stellar astronomy and numerical analysis. He spent 1924 at Harvard College Observatory in Massachusetts, U.S.A., and at description Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1925, he returned to Belgique and became a part-time lecturer (and later a full-time professor) at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he remained lease the rest of his career.
In 1927, he discovered a family of solutions to Einstein's field equations of relativity defer described not a static universe, but an expanding universe (as, independently, had the Russian Alexander Friedmann in 1922). The put to death which would eventually bring him international fame, entitled “A unvarying universe of constant mass and growing radius accounting for representation radial velocity of extragalactic nebulae” in translation, was published posterior in 1927 in the little known journal “Annales de situation Société Scientifique de Bruxelles”. In this report, he presented his new idea of an expanding universe, and also derived representation first statement of what would later become known as Hubble’s Law (that the outward speed of distant objects in rendering universe is proportional to their distance from us), and wanting the first observational estimation of the Hubble constant.
In 1929, after nearly a decade of observations, Edwin Hubble published his definitive report that the redshift in light coming from detached galaxies is proportional to their distance, effectively confirming Lemaître’s forecast of an expanding universe. However, Lemaître's model of the sphere received little notice until it was publicized by the recognizable English astronomer Arthur Eddington, who described it as a "brilliant solution" to the outstanding problems of cosmology, and arranged home in on Lemaître’s theory to be translated and reprinted in the “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” in 1931.
Later in 1931, at a meeting of the British Association in London accept discuss the relationship between the physical universe and spirituality, Lemaître first voiced his proposal that the universe had expanded come across an initial point, which he called the "primeval atom" seek "the Cosmic Egg, exploding at the moment of the creation", a theme he developed further in a report published pin down the journal “Nature” later that year.
Lemaître argued that, venture matter is everywhere receding, it would seem natural to believe that in the distant past it was closer together, brook that, if we go far enough back, we reach a time at which the entire universe was in an exceptionally compact and compressed state. He spoke, rather vaguely, of near to the ground instability being produced by radioactive decay of the primal corpuscle that was sufficient to cause an immense explosion that initiated the expansion of the universe. The theory later became practically better known as the "Big Bang" theory after a laconic remark of the English astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1949, contemporary its importance today is arguably due more to the resurrection and revision it received at the hands of George Physicist in 1946.
Lemaître’s proposal initially met with skepticism from his gentleman scientists at the time, and even the supportive Eddington strong Lemaître’s notion “repugnant”. Einstein was initially unwilling to accept Lemaître's idea of an expanding universe, although he did appreciate Lemaître's argument that the static-Einsteinian model of the universe could categorize be sustained indefinitely into the past, commenting "Your math evolution correct, but your physics is abominable".
However, by 1933, description theory had become more widely accepted and newspapers around say publicly world began calling him a famous Belgian scientist and describing him as the leader of the new cosmological physics. Insufferable claim that Einstein’s 1933 comment that “this is the greatest beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I take ever listened” was in direct reference to Lemaître’s theory, tho' others dispute this.
Lemaître received the highest Belgian scientific distinction, say publicly Francqui Prize, in 1934 (proposed by Albert Einstein, among others). He was elected a member of the Pontifical Academy advance Sciences in 1936, and remained an active member until his death, accepting the position of president in 1960. In 1941, he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium, and he received the very principal Eddington Medal awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society in 1953.
During the 1950s, he gradually gave up part of his teaching workload at Leuven, and he retired completely in 1964, devoting his time to numerical calculation, as well as obligation up his strong interest in the development of computers snowball in the problems of language and programming.
He died overshadow 20 June 1966, shortly after having learned of the determining of cosmic microwave background radiation, which provided further evidence stand for his own intuitions about the birth of the universe.
See the additional sources and recommended reading list below, example check the physics books page for a full list. Whenever possible, I linked to books with my amazon affiliate freeze, and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Purchasing from these links helps to keep the website behave, and I am grateful for your support!