George Gamow on the "big bang."

Weiner:

Right. And the cosmology has continued. Now that's one of the final things that I want to get into. Your work in stellar energies and star evolution, leads to certain cosmological views, and so, in the popular mind and in the scientific community, you were considered, and still are, a champion of a particular cosmological theory. But I don't know who popularized it as "big bang." Did you? Or did it come from some other source?

Gamow:

Well, I don't like the word "big bang;" I never call it "big bang," because it is kind of cliché. This was invented, I think, by steady-state cosmologists--"big bang" and also the "fire ball" they call it, which has nothing to do with it--it's not fire ball at all. Nothing to do with the fire ball of atomic bomb. I call it radiation regime and meta regime. And there is no ball because you never see seams in it, so there is no ball if it means the surface of a ball. High temperature was also out.

Weiner:

That's interesting because the names are practically synonymous in the popular mind: Big bang equals Gamow. You know that?

Gamow:

Yes.