Cosmology and Controversy

The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe

Helge Kragh

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780691005461
  9780691026237
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691227719
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

For over three millennia, most people could understand the universe only in terms of myth, religion, and philosophy. Between 1920 and 1970, cosmology transformed into a branch of physics. With this remarkably rapid change came a theory that would finally lend empirical support to many long-held beliefs about the origins and development of the entire universe: the theory of the big bang. In this book, Helge Kragh presents the development of scientific cosmology for the first time as a historical event, one that embroiled many famous scientists in a controversy over the very notion of an evolving universe with a beginning in time. In rich detail he examines how the big-bang theory drew inspiration from and eventually triumphed over rival views, mainly the steady-state theory and its concept of a stationary universe of infinite age.


In the 1920s, Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaître showed that Einstein's general relativity equations possessed solutions for a universe expanding in time. Kragh follows the story from here, showing how the big-bang theory evolved, from Edwin Hubble's observation that most galaxies are receding from us, to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Sir Fred Hoyle proposed instead the steady-state theory, a model of dynamic equilibrium involving the continuous creation of matter throughout the universe. Although today it is generally accepted that the universe started some ten billion years ago in a big bang, many readers may not fully realize that this standard view owed much of its formation to the steady-state theory. By exploring the similarities and tensions between the theories, Kragh provides the reader with indispensable background for understanding much of today's commentary about our universe.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter One: Background: From Einstein to Hubble
• Chapter Two: Lemaître’s Fireworks Universe
• Chapter Three: Gamow’s Big Bang
• Chapter Four: The Steady-State Alternative
• Chapter Five: Creation and Controversy
• Chapter Six: The Universe Observed
• Chapter Seven: From Controversy to Marginalization
• Chapter Eight: Epilogue: Dynamics of a Controversy
• Appendix I: A Cosmological Chronology, 1917-1971
• Appendix II: Technical Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index