Einstein’s Forgotten Model of the Universe
In 1917, Albert Einstein amazed the world of physics by publishing his general theory of relativity in which he describes gravity as a geometric property of space and time. That immediately raised the broader question of the structure of the universe as a whole, a problem that founded the modern discipline of cosmology.
In the next few years, various scientists developed various different models of the way the fabric of space time might be arranged in the cosmos, researchers such as the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, the Dutch mathematician Willem de Sitter and the Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre. Einstein played a relatively small part in these discussions, producing only a few important contributions.
At that time, the conventional thinking was that the universe existed in a steady-state, that it was neither expanding nor contracting. And for that reason, Einstein introduced a cosmological constant into his model that could be fine-tuned to ensure that the universe did not expand or contract.
But a key part of the jigsaw was missing. At about that time, Edwin Hubble began to publish data suggesting that the “island universes”, or galaxies, that astronomers could see were vastly more distant than the stars and moving away from us at rapid speed. His conclusion, one that profoundly changed our understanding of the cosmos, was that the universe must be expanding.
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https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/einsteins-forgotten-model-of-the-universe-3dc38467b75a
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