The Russian mathematician and physicist Alexander Friedmann (1888-1925) is well known among relativists, but his contributions to cosmology are largely misunderstood. Even the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences misrepresented Friedmann's work in the 2011 Nobel Prize scientific background essay. Friedmann was the first physicist who demonstrated that Albert Einstein's general relativity admits non-static solutions, and the universe can expand, oscillate, and be born in a singularity. Friedmann's conclusion was based on his analysis of an elliptic integral; this worksheet employs Maple's utility of handling elliptic integrals to present Friedmann's results graphically. Friedmann's differential equation governing the evolution of the universe based on Einstein's general theory of relativity is also derived using Maple's tensor package.
Frank Wang