Science
Georges Lemaître
Relativistic cosmologist
Also known as Georges Lemaitre
Photograph · Image credit
Who they are
Georges Lemaître developed a relativistic model with an increasing cosmic radius and related it to observed galaxy redshifts in 1927. Using existing brightness and velocity data, he estimated a distance–velocity proportionality. His paper brought mathematical cosmology and astronomical measurements together before Hubble’s better-known 1929 comparison.
He provides the timeline’s early explicit expansion interpretation of the galaxy data.
Selected contributions
- Combined an expanding relativistic model with published galaxy data in the 1927 paper.Source ↗
Selected works
Academic paper · 1927
Un univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant, rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extra-galactiques
Lemaître combines a relativistic expanding-universe model with published galaxy brightness and velocity data. The translated paper includes an estimate of the distance–velocity relation that preceded Hubble’s 1929 analysis.
1927 French work read through the English translation appended to Jean-Pierre Luminet’s 2013 editorial, not the altered 1931 translation.
Reading scope & citation
Reuses documented prior inspection: Selected translated primary-paper appendix passages inspected; original French facsimile not inspected.
In the timeline
Biography sources & portrait credit
- 1927 expanding-universe paper — translated appendix in Luminet’s editorial ↗Original Annales de la Société scientifique de Bruxelles; General Relativity and Gravitation editorial note on arXiv
Portrait credit
Unknown photographer. Public domain (Commons file-specific copyright declaration). Via Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph. Cropped to 4:5, resized to 320 × 400 and converted to WebP.
Image source & identification ↗ · Public domain (Commons file-specific copyright declaration) ↗
