Evolution of Ideas in Modern Cosmology

Abstract

A short history of 20th century cosmology is given. We start with the first relativistic world-models of Einstein, de Sitter, Friedmann and Lemaitre, proceed through the important developments in observational cosmology initiated by Hubble’s discoveries of the universal expansion to the first serious formulation of the Hot Big Bang model by Gamow and then discuss the important steps in the history taken place from the 1950s up until the 1970s, such as the discovery of the cosmic microwave radiation, the singularity theorems and the first attempts in the direction of quantum cosmology. We then discuss cosmology in the period 1970–1990 focusing on chaotic and inflationary cosmologies as well as work on alternative and quantum cosmology. We round off with a short discussion of current trends in the field such as the now emerging ideas of string and M-theory cosmologies.