If you had asked me yesterday could a devout Catholic priest also be a physicist espousing the Big Bang theory and cosmic expansion. I would probably have said no; however today, thanks to the Google Doodle featuring Georges Lemaitre I have been completely disabused of that notion.
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (1894-1966) was the first physicist to derive Hubble's Law and also work on what was later to become known as Hubble's Constant.
It may seem strange that they were not called Lemaitre's Law and Lemaitre's Constant, however he published his theory in a little known Belgium magazine and so his thoughts were not given much attention by the wider physics community.
Lemaitre grew up in a time when it could easily be argued that physics was experiencing its own renaissance. From the discovery of X-rays one year after the birth of Lemaitre in 1895. Through to the work of Max Planck, Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, physics was enjoying a blossoming period full of new discoveries and theories.
For any physicist it would have been a very exciting time to be involved in science. Indeed the scientists of that period were very much the rock stars of their generation.
Lemaitre gained his doctorate in 1920 and was ordained as a priest in 1923, in the same year he travelled to Cambridge, England where he became involved in astronomy, and began working on his theory of an expanding universe.
It was four years later in 1927 whereby he announced his findings, however Einstein whose model of the universe was static, rejected Lamaitre's ideas, saying; "Your calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious."
However Einstein remained a respected peer, and in fact Lemaitre presented his doctoral thesis at MIT in order to gain his PHD, called The gravitational field in a fluid sphere of uniform invariant density according to the theory of relativity.
Even though Edwin Hubble published his findings after Georges Lemaitre, he is the one who got all the credit and a physical law named after him.
This wasn't just because Hubble was easier to pronounce than Lemaitre (though these things sometimes do play a apart), it was that Hubble, along with Einstein, resided in America where all the action was taking place.
It is difficult to know just how devout a Catholic Georges Lemaitre was, however we do know that he saw no conflict between his science and his religion.
This is something that fascinates me, because whilst scientific discoveries don't necessarily disprove the existence of a deity. They definitely do so when it comes to creation myths in various religions; for instance it is demonstrably false that the universe is 6000-10000 years old. Or that the earth is at the centre of the whole shebang. Or that rain water is different from sea water, or the light of the stars is different from the light of the sun.
These facts make it even more surprising in 1951 that Pope Pius XII tried to use Lemaitre's theories as a validation for Catholic doctrine. The Pope was later persuaded not to mention creationism publicly again by the Vatican's scientific adviser Daniel O'Connell.
O'Connell realised the dangers for religion by creating the God of the gaps, whereby God is pushed further and further back into pockets of human ignorance. Only to find that it has to move again once that very ignorance turns to enlightenment.
Lemaitre's original theory of a *"Primeval Atom", which was later derisively dismissed as "A Big Bang" by the static universe astronomer Fred Hoyle, was at first dismissed by the physics community.
However after Einstein, who was at first also dismissive of Lemaitre's theory, encouraged him to carry on his work, the idea began to take hold.
It was in 1932 at a Solvay Conference (a conference for physics and chemistry) that Albert Einstein was reported to have stood up applauded and declared; "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened."
Although there was later dispute as to whether Einstein was referring to Lemaitre's whole theory, or just the part where he refers to cosmic rays being leftover radiation from the big bang. By that point it didn't matter, he had been endorsed by Einstein himself, which meant it was time for the rest for the world to acknowledge his achievements.
Lemaitre died in 1966 at the age of 72, however not before learning about the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, which provided further evidence for his proposal about the birth of the universe.
Thus unlike many theoretical physicists from his time, he actually got to see his life work validated and therefore it is not too far a stretch to say that he died a happy man.
DO YOU KNOW OF ANY OTHER GREAT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES MADE BY RELIGIOUS MEN OR WOMEN? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
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Title image: Public Domain
