Google Doodle celebrates Fr Georges Lemaître, proposer of Big Bang theory

By Jordan Grantham, 17 July 2018
Fr Georges Lemaitre (proposer of the Big Bang theory) and Albert Einstein. Photo: University of Leuven.

 

The Google Search homepage has billions of daily views and today visitors will see an awesome animation of Belgian priest physicist Fr Georges Lemaître, celebrated proponent of the Big Bang theory.

Fr Lemaître (“leh-mate”) produced work that interacted with the research of other leading scientific minds of his time, including Einstein, Hubble and Friedmann.

Intellectual gifts and spiritual devotion manifested themselves early in Fr Lemaître’s childhood, when he studied at a Jesuit school and then joined the seminary, after serving in World War I. He won a scholarship to Cambridge University, going on to study at Harvard while completing a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Google Doodle today honours Fr Georges Lemaitre. Image: Google.

Fr Lemaître has come to symbolise the harmony between science and religion. He was not motivated by religion in his research on the Big Bang theory and was somewhat embarrassed by Pope Pius XII’s enthusiasm for it.

“As far as I see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being,” Fr Lemaître said.

Pope John XXIII asked Fr Lemaître to join an important commission investigating contraception but died before the commission delivered its report to Pope Paul VI.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, which is synonymous with the Church’s teaching on contraception and fertility.

Read more about Fr Lemaître in The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaitre, Einstein and the birth of modern cosmologyby John Farrell (Thunder’s Mouth Press).

 

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