Nearly Forgotten Cosmological Concept of E. B. Gliner

E. B. Gliner started his scientific career in 1963 at the age of 40. In 1965, when the existence of the cosmological constant lambda seemed unnecessary to most cosmologists, he renewed interest in the problem by emphasizing a material interpretation of de Sitter space (i.e., the space curved in the presence of lambda). According to that interpretation, the curvature is produced by a cosmological vacuum (now identified as dark energy of the universe). In 1970, Gliner proposed a description of exponential expansion (or contraction) of the universe at the early (or late) evolution stage dominated by cosmological vacuum. In 1975, Gliner (with I. G. Dyminikova) suggested a model of the early universe free of Big Bang singularity, and developed a scenario of nonsingular Friedmann cosmology. Many of these findings were used in the modern inflation scenarios of the universe, first proposed by A. A. Starobinsky (1979) and A. Guth (1981) and greatly multiplied later. However, these inflation scenarios differ from the scenario of Gliner and Dymnikova, and Gliner's contribution to cosmology is nearly forgotten. The history and the essence of this contribution are outlined, as well the difference from the inflation theories.