The Elegant Universe
Edgar Allan Poe was abandoned and orphaned, disowned by his foster family, was court-martialed, married his 13 year old first cousin, was an alcoholic, probably suicidal, and died at age 40. However he was also one of the best American short story writers, and one of the best poets around.
He wrote a long, convoluted, little-known prose poem called Eureka in 1848 which is mostly about the nature of the universe and metaphysics. In it though he proposes what we recognize as the Big Bang theory of the beginning of the universe, as well as certain concepts from general relativity.
"Oneness, then, is all that I predicate of the originally created matter... This constitution [the current state of the world] has been effected by forcing the originally and therefore normally One into the abnormal condition of Many...A diffusion from unity..."
He claims that God's only direct creation was the original particle (singularity) from which the universe exploded, and that the universe will eventually collapse back to this singularity - both ideas which are still current in many respected theologies including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and some Hindu traditions. Most physicists accept Big Bang theory, although there's a contingent who disagree, including Stephen Hawking (who used to be all for it).
The Big Bang theory was scientifically proposed in 1927 by Georges LeMaitre based on Einstein's general relativity. Exactly 100 years after Eureka! was published, George Gamow predicted the existence of cosmic microwave radiation background (radiation left over from the Big Bang). This kind of radiation was discovered, depending on whom you believe, by Soviets on purpose or by Americans by accident in 1964.
