Interpreting Edwin Hubble 's discovery of a linear relation between the redshifts of the galaxies and their radial distance as evidence for an expanding universe, Einstein abandoned his earlier static model of the universe and embraced the dynamic cosmology of Alexander Friedmann. Removing the cosmological constant term from the Friedmann equations on the grounds that it was both unsatisfactory and unnecessary, Einstein arrived at a model of a universe that expands and then contracts, a model that was later denoted the Friedmann–Einstein model of the universe.