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Edwin Hubble is widely known for his 1929 discovery that the universe
is expanding. However, two years earlier, Georges Lemaitre published
similar conclusions in an obscure journal, the Annals of the
Scientific Society of Brussels. As a result, the International
Astronomical Union has recently recommended that what has previoulsy
been referred to a Hubble's law -- that the recessional velocity of a
galaxy increases with its distance from our own Galaxy -- should now
be known as the Hubble-Lemaitre law. This law implies that the
universe is expanding, with Fred Hoyle coining the term "Big Bang" in
1949 for the origin of the Universe. "Big Bang Theory" is now also
well known as an American sitcom which premiered in 2007 and is now in
its 12th, and final, season. The popularity of the tv show led the
city of Pasadena to honour it by naming a laneway after it in 2016.
The work of Hubble and Lemaitre built upon the observation of Vesto
Slipher who, a decade earlier, made the the first measurements of
recessional velocities for galaxies, providing the empirical basis for
the expansion of the universe. Slipher was born on November 11th,
1875, and so today's ADAP is in his honour.
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