Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph �duard Lema�tre (July 17, 1894 � June 20, 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of physics and astronomer at the Universit� catholique de Louvain.

Fr. (later Msgr.) Lema�tre proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, although he called it his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'

He was a pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology: suggesting a pre-cursor of Hubble's law in 1927, and then publishing his primeval atom theory in the pages of Nature in 1931. At the time Einstein believed in a static universe and had previously expressed his skepticism about Lema�tre's original 1927 paper. A similar solution to Einstein's equations, suggesting a changing radius to the size of the universe, had been proposed in 1922 by Alexander Alexandrovich Friedman, as Einstein informed Lema�tre when he approached him with the theory at the 1927 Solvay Conference (Friedman had also been criticized by Einstein), but it is Lema�tre, with his proposed mechanism, that made the theory famous for several reasons according to historians. First, Friedman was a mathematician who was not working with astronomical data or concerned with the math as a description of physical reality. Secondly, Friedman died young and could not further work on his ideas. Thirdly, Lema�tre worked with astronomers and made his theory in accord with observations and had consequences which could be tested. Fourth, Arthur Eddington made sure that Lema�tre got a hearing in the scientific community.

Lema�tre also proposed the theory at an opportune time since Edwin Hubble would soon release his velocity-distance relation that strongly supported an expanding universe and, consequently, the Big Bang theory. In fact, Lema�tre derived what became known as Hubble's Law in his 1927 paper, two years before Hubble. However, since Lema�tre spent his entire productive life in Europe rather than emigrating to America, the contributions of scientists such as Hubble or Einstein, who can be claimed to have a US connection, are often more well known in the US.

Both Friedman and Lema�tre had found that the universe must be expanding. Lema�tre went further than Friedman, since he concluded that an initial "creation-like" event must have occurred. This is the Big Bang theory as we know it today, and this is why he is credited with its discovery.

Einstein at first dismissed Friedman and then (privately) Lema�tre out of hand, saying that not all mathematics leads to correct theories. After Hubble's discovery was published, Einstein quickly and publicly endorsed Lema�tre's theory, helping both the theory and priest get fast recognition. [4]

In 1933 he found an important inhomogeneous solution of Einstein's field equations describing a spherical dust cloud, the Lemaitre-Tolman metric

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

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Science is a tool given to us by God for us to understand the nature of His creation.

Interesting, I love the story of when Richard Feinman was giving his first student lecture at Princeton, and it was on a theory which basically disproved Einsteins Theory of relativity. Many of the great physicists of the world were going to princeton at the time and Feinman got kind of nervous when Neils Bohr walked into the auditorium. But he gave his talk about gravity and how it didn't work with Einsteins Theory of Relativity. At the end of his talk he looked up and Albert Einstein was standing in the back of the Auditorium. Niels Bohr got up and said how preposterous he thought Fienmans ideas were, as did many of the other leading physicists of the day. He was basically totally belittled by the leaders in the field until at the very end, Albert Einstein got up and said, I think the boy has made some very good points, he looked puzzled, scratches his head, and says,"I'm gonna have to go think about this"