Georges Lemaître: Who was the Belgian priest who discovered the universe is expanding?
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Georges Lemaître was an astronomer and professor of physics who is thought to be the first to have theorised that the universe is expanding.
His theory was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble in what is now known as Hubble’s Law.
Lemaître is also credited with proposing what has now become
known as the Big Bang theory – which says that the observable universe
began with an explosion of a single particle.
The theory, which is now widely accepted, first appeared in
1931 in one of Lemaître’s academic papers and was a significant break
from the orthodoxy of the time.
Born on 17 July 1894 in Belgium, he initially began studying
civil engineering. His academic pursuits were however put on hold while
he served in the Belgian army for the duration of the First World War.
After the war, he studied physics and mathematics and was also ordained as a priest.
In 1923 he became a graduate student at the University of
Cambridge before going on to study at Harvard and Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT).
In 1925 he returned to Belgium, where he became a part-time
lecturer at the Catholic University of Leuven. Two years later, he
published his groundbreaking idea of an expanding universe.
His initial idea was not related specifically to the Big
Bang, but his later research focused on the concept of the universe
starting from a single atom.
In 1933 at the California Institute of Technology, some of
the greatest scientists of the time from around the world gathered to
hear a series of lectures.
After Lemaître delivered his lecture and theory, Albert
Einstein stood up and said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory
explanation of creation to which I ever listened."
Post Credit: www.independent.co.uk
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