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or his contribution to enhancing the understanding of the universe, Lemaitre received in 1934 the prestigious Francqui prize, the highest scientific accolade in Belgium — and one of his nominators was Einstein.

The Google Doodle on Tuesday that marks Lemaitre’s 124th birth anniversary depicts the cosmologist within the constantly expanding universe that he first envisioned, surrounded by galaxies expanding outward just as he said they would.

Born on July 17, 1894 in the Belgian city of Charleroi, Lemaitre wore many hats in his lifetime. He served the Belgian Army during World War I. He entered a seminary after the war and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1923. He studied physics at the University of Cambridge, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Lemaitre’s 1927 paper theorising that the universe was expanding was soon substantiated by Edwin Hubble’s observations, which were published in 1929.

Lemaitre accurately estimated the numerical value that astronomers would come to call the Hubble constant, a unit of measurement that describes the universe’s rate of expansion.

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