The 1985 Rutherford Memorial Lecture - twentieth century cosmology

The emergence of cosmological ideas during this century is traced in order to see how the union between the world of Rutherford and the contemporary cosmologist has been reached. The age of the earth and the solar system, the distribution of the stars and nebulae, and the expansion of the universe are discussed. The influence of radio astronomy on cosmological thinking is examined, including the steady state or continuous creation theory and the evolutionary theory of the universe