Did You Know a Christian Priest Created the Big Bang Theory?

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George Lemaitre, a Belgian, discovered the cosmic event in 1947.


The church is still in a quandary about a particular scientific hypothesis: the Big Bang Theory. They may have forgotten that the idea itself was first thought of by Monsignor George Lemaitre, a Christian priest from Belgium. Lemaitre, in addition to being a priest, was also a known physicist. Monsignor George Lemaitre proposed the Big Bang Theory in 1927.[/tweetit]

Did You Know a Christian Priest Created the Big Bang Theory?[/tweetthis]

The Vatican celebrated Lemaitre's legacy with a full-fledged cosmology conference. The program united science and the church. His work is helping people to comprehend the universe's many mysteries.

George Lemaitre was a citizen of Belgium. He was born in the town of Charleroi in 1894. He earned his mathematics Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Louvain in 1920. He entered the church through the seminary of Maison Saint Rombaut. In 1923, he was ordained as a Catholic priest. The science-student-turned-priest subsequently studied astronomy with Arthur Eddington at Cambridge University, England, and also at Harvard College Observatory in America. After earning his second doctorate at M.I.T., Lemaitre went back to Belgium and took up a professorship at Louvain.

Lemaitre published a scientific paper in 1927 where he made the then-controversial claim of the universe continually expanding. This postulate is now known to scientists as Hubble's Law. He made yet another radical suggestion in 1930. Lemaitre said the expansion of the universe began from one specific point, ‘primeval atom’ to be exact.

The Belgian scientist's hypothesis was poorly received at that time. Fred Hoyle, a fellow scientist, totally rejected the Big Bang idea. Albert Einstein, Lemaitre's friend, and a contemporary scientist, had trouble with the theory. To be fair, what the Belgian priest said became accepted with the passage of time.

Lemaitre did not view religion and science at opposing ends. He was simply wary that these two must not be confused. The scientist in him insisted to those who doubt his science acumen that the Bible must not be confused with a textbook of science. Lemaitre wrote on his work of the primeval atom, “'We cannot end this rapid review which we have made together of the most magnificent subject that the human mind may be tempted to explore without being proud of these splendid endeavors of Science in the conquest of the Earth, and also without expressing our gratitude to One who has said: "I am the Truth," One who gave us the mind to understand him and to recognize a glimpse of his glory in our universe which he has so wonderfully adjusted to the mental power with which he has endowed us.”

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