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- Early textbook on the special and general relativity theory by Georges Lemaître, the founding father of the Big Bang Theory
- Unique document presented in the historical context
- Includes both the augmented original French edition and the English translation of “La Physique d’Einstein” by Lemaître
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book presents the first English translation of the original French treatise “La Physique d’Einstein” written by the young Georges Lemaître in 1922, only six years after the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. It includes an historical introduction and a critical edition of the original treatise in French supplemented by the author’s own later additions and corrections.
Monsignor Georges Lemaître can be considered the founder of the “Big Bang Theory” and a visionary architect of modern Cosmology. The scientific community is only beginning to grasp the full extent of the legacy of this towering figure of 20th century physics. Against the best advice of the greatest names of his time, the young Lemaître was convinced, solely through the study of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, that space and time must have had a beginning with a tremendous “Big Bang” from a “quantum primeval atom” resulting in an ever-expanding Universe with a positive cosmological constant.But how did the young Lemaître, essentially on his own, come to grips with the physics of Einstein? A year before his ordination as a diocesan priest, he submitted the audacious treatise, published in this book, that was to earn him Fellowships to study at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, and launched him on a scientific path of ground-breaking discoveries. Almost a century after Lemaître’s seminal publications of 1927 and 1931, this highly pedagogical treatise is still of timely interest to young minds and remains of great value from a history of science perspective.
Authors, Editors and Affiliations
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Mathematics and Physics, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Jan Govaerts
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Catégorie paramédicale, Haute École Louvain-en-Hainaut, Montignies-sur-Sambre, Belgium
Jean-François Stoffel
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Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Georges Lemaître
About the editors
Former Dean of the Faculty of Science at l’Université catholique de Louvain from 2009 to 2015, Jan Govaerts is Full Professor of Theoretical Physics at UCLouvain. In 2016-2017 he co-ordinated a year-long series of celebratory conferences, exhibitions and cultural events that were to mark the fifty years since the passing of Georges Lemaître and his ongoing living legacy.
Historian and philosopher of science, Jean-François Stoffel conducts research on the life and work of Pierre Duhem on the one hand, and on the history of cosmology on the other, with a particular interest in the anthropological consequences of the Copernican revolution. This twofold interest in the historical interactions between scientific and philosophical thought inevitably led him to encounter the work of Georges Lemaître.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Learning the Physics of Einstein with Georges Lemaître
Book Subtitle: Before the Big Bang Theory
Authors: Georges Lemaître
Editors: Jan Govaerts, Jean-François Stoffel
Translated by: Christine Leroy, Stephen N. Lyle
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22030-3
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-22029-7Published: 06 December 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-22032-7Published: 12 December 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-22030-3Published: 26 November 2019
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXVI, 243
Additional Information: Translation of Georges Lemaître’s French language text: La Physique d’Einstein (1922) by Stephen Lyle and Christine Leroy
Topics: Classical and Quantum Gravitation, Relativity Theory, History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics