The Belgian astronomer Abbé Georges Édouard Lemaître (1894-1966) originated what came to be called the "big bang" theory of cosmogony.

Georges Lemaître was born in Charleroi on July 17, 1894. Already at age nine he had decided to become both a scientist and a priest. He never saw any essential conflict between science and religion; later in life he is reported to have asked: "Do you know where the heart of the misunderstanding lies? It really is a joke on the scientists. They are a literal-minded lot. Hundreds of professional and amateur scientists still actually believe that the Bible pretends to teach science. This is a good deal like assuming that there must be authentic religious dogma in the binomial theorem."

At the University of Louvain, Lemaître took courses in engineering and the humanities, with emphasis on the former. By 1914 he had...