In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest and theoretical physicist who changed our understanding of the cosmos. While Edwin Hubble often gets the credit, it was actually Lemaître who first argued that the recession of galaxies provided evidence of an expanding universe. We dive into his groundbreaking "hypothesis of the primeval atom"—now famously known as the Big Bang theory—and how he derived the relevant laws of expansion years before Hubble published his findings.

Join us as we discuss:

• The "Abominable" Physics: How Albert Einstein initially dismissed Lemaître’s work as having "abominable" physics, only to later applaud it as the "most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation" he had ever heard.
• The Soldier and the Scholar ...