Lemaître, Georges, Abbé

Related Category: Astronomy: Biographies

(zhôrzh, äbā´ ləmĕt´rə), 1894–1966, Belgian astrophysicist, mathematician, and Catholic priest. In 1927 he became professor of astrophysics at the Univ. of Louvain and proposed the big-bang theory to help link Einstein's relativity theory to the observed evidence of an expanding universe. He also did research on cosmic rays and the three-body problem. His works include Discussion sur l'évolution de l'univers (1933) and L'Hypothèse de l'atome primitif (1946).