“Who Discovered the Expanding Universe?”
Text from Wikiquote, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikiquote
- #quote

Figure timeline
Richard Chace Tolman was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who made many contributions to statistical mechanics and theoretical cosmology. He was a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
science · American physicist (1881–1948) · physicist · university teacher · mathematician · theoretical physicist · physical chemist · chemist · also Richard Chace Tolman, Richard C. Tolman, Richard Tolman, Tolman
Born 4 March 1881 · Died 5 September 1948 · Q714440
16 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
7 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
“Who Discovered the Expanding Universe?”
Text from Wikiquote, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Howard Percy Robertson 1903-1961: A Biographical Memoir,”
Text from Wikiquote, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Died 1948-09-05.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Three weeks after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage without warning
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And published some papers on the thermodynamics of surface phases
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Published a new detailed work that covered the application of statistical mechanics to classical and quantum systems
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship (1932).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“On the relation between the expansion and the mean density of the universe”
Text from Wikiquote, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Tolman published a text on statistical mechanics whose background was the old quantum theory of Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Arnold Sommerfeld
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
He married psychologist Ruth Sherman Tolman in 1924.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Drew attention to difficulties as regards entropy and resulted in its demise until the late 1960s
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
A forerunner of the Technocracy movement where he helped conduct an energy survey analyzing the possibility of applying science to social and industrial affairs
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Conceived of the concept of relativistic mass, writing that "the expression
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Doctor of Philosophy (1910).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bachelor's degree (1903).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born 1881-03-04.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Connections