Used with
permission of Maiken Naylor, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA,
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/exhibits/stamps
Georges Edouard Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Belgian cosmologist, astrophysicist and priest, was interested in the problem of the creation of the universe and proposed a theory of an expanding universe based on his solutions to Einsteins equations of general relativity. He envisioned a primal atom containing all the matter in the universe, which exploded at some point 10-20 billion years ago, hurtling elementary particles and photons outward, where they cooled and condensed eventually to form the light eleme nts, heavy elements, molecules, and finally galaxies. The Big Bang theory, as it was derisively called by Fred Hoyle, a proponent of a steady state theory of the universe, is supported by many independent astronomical observations, starting with Hubble s observations of receding galaxies and the discoveries of Penzias, Wilson, and Fowler, above.