Georges Lemaître and the "Big Bang" [aka "hypothesis of the primeval atom"]

Georges Lemaître
July 17th, 1894 to June 20th, 1966

This Big Bang will not end as to whom originated the notion.

Georges (Henri) Lemaître was a Belgian astronomer and cosmologist, born in Charleroi, Belgium. He was also a civil engineer, army officer, and ordained priest. He did research on cosmic rays and the three-body problem. Lemaître formulated (1927) the modern big-bang theory. He reasoned that if the universe was expanding now, then the further you go in the past, the universe’s contents must have been closer together. He envisioned that at some point in the distant past, all the matter in the universe was in an exceedingly dense state, crushed into a single object he called the "primeval super-atom" which exploded, with all its constituent parts rushing away. This theory was later developed by Gamow and others.

Georges Lemaître [Wikipedia]

Big Bang [Wikipedia]


Credit where credit is due--"Big Bang"

Shades of Ralph Alpher...Fritz Zwicky

The astronomy/cosmology debates of the 1930's & 1940's