<P> The Big Bang theory developed from observations of the structure of the universe and from theoretical considerations . In 1912 Vesto Slipher measured the first Doppler shift of a "spiral nebula" (spiral nebula is the obsolete term for spiral galaxies), and soon discovered that almost all such nebulae were receding from Earth . He did not grasp the cosmological implications of this fact, and indeed at the time it was highly controversial whether or not these nebulae were "island universes" outside our Milky Way . Ten years later, Alexander Friedmann, a Russian cosmologist and mathematician, derived the Friedmann equations from Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity, showing that the universe might be expanding in contrast to the static universe model advocated by Einstein at that time . In 1924 Edwin Hubble's measurement of the great distance to the nearest spiral nebulae showed that these systems were indeed other galaxies . Independently deriving Friedmann's equations in 1927, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest, proposed that the inferred recession of the nebulae was due to the expansion of the universe . </P> <P> In 1931 Lemaître went further and suggested that the evident expansion of the universe, if projected back in time, meant that the further in the past the smaller the universe was, until at some finite time in the past all the mass of the universe was concentrated into a single point, a "primeval atom" where and when the fabric of time and space came into existence . </P> <P> Starting in 1924, Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators, the forerunner of the cosmic distance ladder, using the 100 - inch (2.5 m) Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory . This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose redshifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher . In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity--now known as Hubble's law . Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle . </P> <P> In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady state theory . This perception was enhanced by the fact that the originator of the Big Bang theory, Georges Lemaître, was a Roman Catholic priest . Arthur Eddington agreed with Aristotle that the universe did not have a beginning in time, viz., that matter is eternal . A beginning in time was "repugnant" to him . Lemaître, however, thought that </P>

Who created the first valid idea of a scale of the universe