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Letters to Nature - Nature 127, 706 (9 May 1931) | doi:10.1038/127706b0 - The Beginning of the World from the Point of View of Quantum Theory. - G. LEMAÎTRE

If the future development of quantum theory happens to turn in that direction, we could conceive the beginning of the universe in the form of a unique atom, the atomic weight of which is the total mass of the universe. This highly unstable atom would divide in smaller and smaller atoms by a kind of super-radioactive process. ……Clearly the initial quantum could not conceal in itself the whole course of evolution ; but, according to the principle of indeterminacy, that is not necessary. Our world is now understood to be a world where something really happens; the whole story of the world need not have been written down in the first quantum like a song on the disc of a phonograph. The whole matter of the world must have been present at the beginning, but the story it has to tell may be written step by step.