JUST TOO COOL! Move to rename Hubble’s Law… for a priest

A reader alerted me to something for a Just To Cool entry, or perhaps Look! Up In The Sky!

There has been a recommendation to rename, or rather amplify the name of Hubble’s Law after Fr. Georges Lemaître.   HERE

The statement reads, ““To honour the intellectual integrity and the supremely significant discovery by Georges Lemaître, the IAU (International Astronomical Union) is pleased to recommend that the expansion of the Universe be referred to as the Hubble–Lemaître law,” the association stated Oct. 29”.

So much for the misguided and ignorant view of (sadly) many today that The Church is “anti-scienc.

Some of the piece:

 

Fr. Georges Lemaître, who died in 1966, was a physicist and mathematician who is widely credited with developing the big bang theory to explain the physical origin of the universe.

Hubble’s law describes how objects in the expanding universe move away from each other with a velocity proportional to their distance apart.

[…]

Of Lemaître interest:

US HERE – UK HERE

And…

Evidence for God from Physics and Philosophy: Extending the Legacy of Monsignor George Lemaître and St. Thomas Aquinas (The University of Dallas Aquinas Lectures)

US HERE – UK HERE

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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2 Comments

  1. The Masked Chicken says:

    LeMaitre actually discovered the Hubble expansion in theoretical research two years before Hubble did, but he published the result in an obscure French journal. Hubble promoted himself and got the law named after him. When Lemaitre’s article was, eventually, published in English (which he translated, himself), he omitted the section on the Hubble expansion, for whatever reason (maybe he figured that Hubble had, already, staked a claim to it and LeMaitre decided to humbly accept that).

    LeMaitre was, also, the first person to solve the Einstein equations of General Relativity, using, basically, the simplest possible initial conditions, but even that was enough to suggest the Big Bang, for which he was given credit.

    The Chicken

  2. Gabriel Syme says:

    A long overdue move, but its still welcome.

    The Church of today ought to do more to teach about the peerless contribution of Catholics – both as the Church institution and as individuals – to scientific research and the pursuit of knowledge, over the centuries.

    Many people, including many Catholics, have a vague notion of the Church being backward and anti-science. They are subtly fed this from the culture and enemies of the Church.

    People have to find out for themselves about (Fr) Georges Lemaitre, or the fact that the Church invented Universities (a development of Cathedral Schools) and founded many, including the first three in Scotland. People have to find out for themselves about the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, or about (Friar) Gregor Mendel, the father of Genetics. And about a billion other examples.

    But most people don’t find out for themselves. Many people of my generation are lapsed. I don’t have facebook, but saw the title pages of 2 people I was at (Catholic) school with and have not seen for ~23 yrs. One had “The Richard Dawkins Foundation of Reason and Science” in his favourites and the other had a link “Science doesn’t care what you believe” in hers.

    You can see that they have succumbed to the anti-Science myth and have been sold a pup in their quest for knowledge.

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