Georges Lemaître and the Big Bang

George Lemaitre, 1894-1966, was a Catholic Priest who is credited with the theory of the Big Bang (The Primeval Atom). As a PhD candidate, some of his early work was reviewed by Albert Einstein who told him "Your calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious." Einstein at the time did not like the idea of an expanding universe."

His theory was held by Pope Pius XII to be scientific validation of Catholicism. While Lemaitre preferred to keep neutral on the religious implications of the theory, he did not believe cosmology and religion were in conflict. 

An earlier post featured another minister-scientist, Thomas Bayes, who developed Bayesian Statistics. While few people, outside mathematicians and scientists, have heard of Bayesian Statistics, nearly everyone has heard of the Big Bang.

Shortly before Lemaitre's death in 1966, evidence of background radiation from the Big Bang was detected by microwaves. The image below is a recent mapping of the background radiation.

Image source: NASA https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/current/pub_papers/nineyear/basic_results/wmap_9yr_basic_results_images.cfm

Additional Notes:

Recent You Tube on Cosmology by Dr. Katie Mack

Forbes Article May 6, 2020