The Big Bang Revolutionaries

As part of its series of special symposia, the SPS organized a symposium in 2019 at the University of Bern on the occasion of the 125^th anniversary of Georges Lemaitre's birth, which attracted a large audience. In four presentations the person and the work of the Belgian priest and later director of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Pontificia Academia Scientiarum) were assessed from today's perspective. One of the speakers was Jean-Pierre Luminet, CNRS Marseille talking about Philosophical aspects and implications of Lemaître's contributions to modern cosmology.

Jean-Pierre Luminet has now published a book entitled The Big Bang Revolutionaries: The Untold Story of Three Scientists Who Reenchanted Cosmology, released on 23 April 2024.

In the book’s foreword we read from Abraham (Avi) Loeb, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science and Director of the Institute for Theory & Computation, Harvard University:

….. I particularly appreciate the discussion of the pioneering work and personality of Lemaître, who can justly be called the father of scientific cosmology. With its discussion also of cosmic topology, the book is a unique contribution to the history of cosmology….

The text of the back cover summarizes:

"Many widely read scientific writers of our day mistakenly attribute the concepts of the expanding universe and the Big Bang to Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein. Hubble did provide evidence of an expanding universe, but he neither discovered such evidence nor accepted the radical idea that space itself was expanding. As for Einstein, he held out against the idea of an expanding universe for more than a decade, and ceased working in the field as soon as he had to amend his view. The real heroes of the Big Bang revolution are the Russian Alexander Friedmann and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître. That they are virtually unknown to the general public is one thing. That their contribution is underestimated by astrophysicists and cosmologists is another, for the concepts they promulgated are among the most remarkable achievements of twentieth-century science. The Big Bang Revolutionaries amends the record, telling the remarkable story of how these two men, joined by the mischievous George Gamow and in the face of conventional scientific wisdom, offered a compelling view of a singular creation of the universe in what Lemaître termed a 'primeval atom'."

For more book details:

https://discoveryinstitutepress.com/book/the-big-bang-revolutionaries/

and

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Revolutionaries-Scientists-Reenchanted/dp/1637120400/

Perhaps also interesting is an interview with Lemaître which was recently discovered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4toGaR1CuI or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXxxpqkv0Bc

Bernhard Braunecker

_{[Released: July 2024]}