Georges Lemaître
Belgian scientist and Catholic priest (1894–1966) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (/ləˈmɛtrə/ lə-MET-rə; French: [ʒɔʁʒ ləmɛːtʁ] ⓘ; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain.[1] He was the first to theorize that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe,[2] which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble.[3][4] He first derived "Hubble's law", now called the Hubble–Lemaître law by the IAU,[5][6] and published the first estimation of the Hubble constant in 1927, two years before Hubble's article.[7][8][3][4] Lemaître also proposed the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe, calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom",[9] and later calling it "the beginning of the world".[10]
Georges Lemaître RAS Associate | |
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Born | Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (1894-07-17)17 July 1894 Charleroi, Belgium |
Died | 20 June 1966(1966-06-20) (aged 71) Leuven, Belgium |
Alma mater | Catholic University of Louvain St Edmund's House, Cambridge Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Known for | Theory of the expansion of the universe Big Bang theory Hubble–Lemaître law Lemaître–Tolman metric Lemaître coordinates Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric |
Awards | Francqui Prize (1934) Eddington Medal (1953) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Cosmology Astrophysics Mathematics |
Institutions | Catholic University of Leuven Catholic University of America |
Doctoral advisor | Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin (Leuven) |
Other academic advisors | Arthur Eddington (Cambridge) Harlow Shapley (MIT) |
Ecclesiastical career | |
Religion | Christianity |
Church | Catholic Church |
Ordained | 22 September 1923 by Désiré-Joseph Mercier |
Signature | |