The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [143]
Georges Lemaître made few notable contributions to cosmology after 1934 but continued to publish reviews and discussions. Although Einstein abandoned the cosmological constant λ in 1931, Lemaître continued to champion it. They had friendly arguments about this issue whenever they met, which led to the joke that “everywhere the two men went, the lambda was sure to go.” Lemaître went on to do important work in celestial mechanics and pioneered the use of electronic computers for numerical calculations. He always hoped the explosive origin of the universe would be validated by astronomical observations and at last received news of the discovery of the cosmic microwave background, the remnant echo of the Big Bang, shortly before he died in 1966. His successor at Louvain, Odon Godart, brought the July 1, 1965, issue of the Astrophysical Journal that contained the Nobel Prize-winning report to Lemaître's hospital bed.
After his great surge of creativity between 1905 and 1917—the period when he generated both special and general relativity, introduced us to the particle of light called a photon, and fashioned the first relativistic model of the universe—Albert Einstein stepped away from further major developments in either quantum or cosmological theory and primarily tried, unsuccessfully, linking the forces of nature in one grand unified theory. He died in 1955, still thinking the cosmological constant was his biggest blunder. Ironically, astronomers have recently brought back the constant to help explain a universe that is not only expanding but accelerating, a behavior that Lemaître anticipated in the 1930s.
Notes
Abbreviations
AIP Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland
CA The Caltech Institute Archives, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California
HL Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, California
HP George Ellery Hale Papers, Caltech Institute Archives, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. (There is also a microfilm edition of these papers at other libraries.)
HUA Harvard University Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
HUB Hubble Papers, Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, California
LOA Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, California
LPV Plate Vault, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, California
LWA Lowell Observatory Archives, Flagstaff, Arizona
MWDF Mount Wilson Observatory Director's Files, Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, California
NAS The Archives of the National Academies, Washington, D.C.
Preface: January 1, 1925
ix “redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery”: Fitzgerald (1925), p. 133.
ix some four thousand scientists descended upon Washington, D.C.: “Thirty-Third Meeting” (1925), p. 245.
x uncharacteristically chatty: According to Grace Coolidge, the president's wife, a young woman once sat next to her husband at a dinner party and bet the normally taciturn president that she could wring at least three words of conversation from him. Coolidge promptly responded, “You lose.”
x “It has taken endless ages to create in men”: “Welfare of World Depends on Science, Coolidge Declares” (1925), pp. 1, 9.
x “occurred an event which was marked on the program”: “Thirty-Third Meeting of the American Astronomical Society” (1925), p. 159.
x give holiday sleds a good tryout: “Blanket of Snow Covers the City” (1925), p. 1.
x walked the short distance to the newly constructed Corcoran Hall: During World War II, with scientists working under a government contract designed to develop new technologies for the conflict, the basement of Corcoran Hall was the birthplace of the bazooka.
xi a paper modestly titled “Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae” was presented: “Thirty-third Meeting of the American Astronomical Society” (1925), p. 159.
xi the only spiral nebulae in the nighttime sky that can be seen with the naked eye: The center of the Triangulum