EINSTEIN, Albert, & Willem de Sitter.

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"On the Relation Between the Expansion and the Mean Density of the Universe. Communicated by the Mount Wilson Observatory, January 25, 1932." First edition, journal issue, of the paper in which Einstein rejected his 1917 cosmological constant and acknowledged the expansion of the universe. Drawing on Hubble's law, Einstein and de Sitter proposed that the constant should be set equal to zero, thereby offering a new model of the universe."In 1917, Einstein had shown how to construct a universe that was static by introducing a 'cosmological constant' into his equations. This matched well with the idea, current before Hubble's 1924 measurement of the distances to the nebulae, of a small and static 'universe' that was confined to the stars of the Milky Way galaxy... Einstein's idea of a static universe, suspended between gravity pulling inward and the cosmological constant making the universe expand, was ruled out by Hubble's data" (Kirshner, pp. 9-12).In Einstein and de Sitter's revised model, "the galaxies receded forever, but the recession rate declines to zero as time approaches infinity. Some sources indicate that this is the first attempt to describe our universe rather than a mathematical abstraction of universes possible under general relativity. Shortly after, Einstein formally renounced his cosmological constant, and according to George Gamow called it 'the biggest blunder of my life'" (Wenner).Einstein and de Sitter (1872-1934) were close collaborators in the 1920s at L

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