George Gamow

George Gamow , born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov , was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist notably an early advocate and developer of Lematres Big Bang theory. He discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay via quantum tunneling, and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis and Big Bang nucleosynthesis , and molecular genetics.

Gamow was born in Odessa, Russian Empire. His father taught Russian language and literature in high school, and his mother taught geography and history at a school for girls. In addition to Russian, Gamow learned to speak some French from his mother and German from a tutor. Gamow learned fluent English in his college years and later. Most of his early publications were in German or Russian, but he later switched to writing in English for both technical papers and for the lay audience.

Source: Wikipedia