Lemaitre's Big Bang

TL;DR

This paper provides an epistemological analysis of the development of relativistic cosmology from 1917 to 1966, highlighting Lemaitre's early contributions to concepts now central to the standard cosmological model.

Contribution

It reveals that Georges Lemaitre anticipated key elements of modern cosmology, such as dark energy and vacuum energy, which are often overlooked in historical accounts.

Findings

Lemaitre's work prefigured dark energy and vacuum energy concepts.

Most modern cosmological ideas were anticipated by Lemaitre.

Lemaitre's contributions are underrecognized in historical literature.

Abstract

I give an epistemological analysis of the developments of relativistic cosmology from 1917 to 1966, based on the seminal articles by Einstein, de Sitter, Friedmann, Lemaitre, Hubble, Gamow and other historical figures of the field. It appears that most of the ingredients of the present-day standard cosmological model, including the acceleration of the expansion due to a repulsive dark energy, the interpretation of the cosmological constant as vacuum energy or the possible non-trivial topology of space, had been anticipated by Georges Lemaitre, although his articles remain mostly unquoted.