Georges Lemaitre
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The Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître |
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Lemaître c. 1933
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| Born |
17 July 1894 Charleroi, Belgium |
| Died | 20 June 1966 (aged 71) Leuven, Belgium |
| Nationality | Belgian |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Catholic University of Leuven |
| Alma mater |
Catholic University of Leuven St Edmund's House, Cambridge Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor |
Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin (Leuven) Arthur Eddington (Cambridge) Harlow Shapley (MIT) |
| Doctoral students | Louis Philippe Bouckaert, Rene van der Borght |
| Known for |
Theory of the expansion of the universe Big Bang theory Lemaître coordinates |
| Notable awards |
Francqui Prize (1934) Eddington Medal (1953) |
Signature
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Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître Associate RAS (French: [ʒɔʁʒə ləmɛtʁ]; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, which he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom" or the "Cosmic Egg".
After a classical education at a Jesuit secondary school, the Collège du Sacré-Coeur, in Charleroi, Lemaître began studying civil engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven at the age of 17. In 1914, he interrupted his studies to serve as an artillery officer in the Belgian army for the duration of World War I. At the end of hostilities, he received the Belgian War Cross with palms.
After the war, he studied physics and mathematics, and began to prepare for the diocesan priesthood, not for the Jesuits. He obtained his doctorate in 1920 with a thesis entitled l'Approximation des fonctions de plusieurs variables réelles (Approximation of functions of several real variables), written under the direction of Charles de la Vallée-Poussin. He was ordained a priest in 1923.
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