Resurfaced 1964 VRT video interview of Georges Lema\^itre

TL;DR

This paper presents the recovery and dissemination of a rare 1964 interview with Georges Lemaître, providing context, translation, and transcript to make this historic footage accessible to a wider audience.

Contribution

The paper documents the recovery, translation, and contextualization of a previously lost interview of Georges Lemaître, enhancing historical understanding of his views.

Findings

Recovered a lost 1964 interview of Georges Lemaître.

Provided English translation and French transcript of the interview.

Made the footage and transcripts publicly accessible.

Abstract

On December 31 2022, the Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), the national public-service broadcaster for the Flemish Community of Belgium, recovered a video recording of a 1964 interview of Georges Lema\^itre. Up until now, that footage was thought to have been lost. This footage represents a unique insight into the views of the physicist often coined as the "father of the Big Bang". The interview was conducted in French and is available online with Flemish subtitles. In an effort to make this treasure broadly available, we provide in this paper some brief context, an English translation of the interview as well as the French transcript for reference.