Lemaître, Georges

Lemaître, Georges

(born July 17, 1894, Charleroi, Belg.—died June 20, 1966, Louvain) Belgian astronomer and cosmologist. He served in the Belgian army during World War I, then entered a seminary and became a priest. In 1927 he became a professor of astrophysics at the University of London and proposed the big-bang model of the formation of the universe. Lemaître's theory, as modified by George Gamow, has become the leading theory of the universe's origin. Lemaître also studied cosmic rays and the three-body problem, which concerns the mathematical description of the motion of three mutually attracting bodies in space.