Georges Lemaître

Georges Lemaître teaching at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

In 1927, Georges Lemaître discovered a family of solutions to Einstein’s relativity equations that described an expanding Universe rather than a static one, and provided the first observational estimation of the Hubble constant. The theory later became much better known as the Big Bang theory.

Naming ESA's fifth Automated Transfer Vehicle after Belgian scientist Georges Lemaître continues the tradition of drawing on great European visionaries to reflect Europe’s deep roots in science, technology and culture.