Alexander Friedmann

Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann was a Russian and Soviet physicist and mathematician, born in 1888, who originated the pioneering theory that the universe is expanding, governed by a set of equations he developed known as the Friedmann equations. He obtained his degree from St. Petersburg State University in 1910 and became a lecturer at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute. He fought in the First World War as an army aviator, an instructor and eventually the head of an airplane factory. In 1922 he introduced the idea of an expanding universe that contained moving matter, and in June 1925 he was appointed director of the Main Geophysical Observatory in Leningrad. In July 1925 he took part in a record-setting balloon flight to 7,400 metres.