Lemaître, Abbé Georges Édouard

views updated May 09 2018

Lemaître, Abbé Georges Édouard (1894–1966) Belgian astrophysicist who formulated the Big Bang theory for the origin of the Universe. He saw the origins of the universe as analogous to a radioactive atom, with all the energy and matter concentrated into a kernel that he called the ‘primeval atom’. Lemaître argued that an expanding Universe would have originated in the explosion of the ‘primeval atom’.