WHEN YOU HEAR THE NAME HUBBLE, YOU PROBABLY THINK ABOUT THE TELESCOPE.
BUT ALMOST A CENTURY AGO, THAT NAME WAS SYNONYMOUS WITH ONE OF THE MOST PREEMINENT ASTRONOMERS
OF THE DAY… EDWIN HUBBLE.
Owen Gingerich: “He was certainly one of the leading observational astronomers of the
20th Century. If you had to pick sort of the leading observer, Hubble would be in competition
for first place.
BORN ON NOVEMBER 20, 1889 IN MARSHFIELD, MISSOURI, THE FOCUS OF THE FUTURE ASTRONOMER’S EARLY
LIFE IS NOT ON THE SKY, BUT ON ATHLETICS.
Dale E Christianson : “He capped a brilliant spring at the Northwestern University Interscholastic
Meet on May 6, 1906, clearing the high bar at 5 feet 8 ½ inches. Hubble was hailed in
the papers for establishing a new state record in the event. Dale E. Christianson, Author
of Edwin Hubble, Mariner of the Nebulae”
HUBBLE GOES ON TO PLAY CENTER FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BASKETBALL TEAM… BUT HE… IS
DRIVING TOWARDS ANOTHER GOAL... THE PRESTIGIOUS RHODES SCHOLARSHIP. IT’S AN HONOR BESTOWED
TO CANDIDATES WHO OFTEN BECOME FUTURE US PRESIDENTS AND CHIEF JUSTICES.
Robert Andrews Millikan: “Seldom have I known a man who seems to be better qualified
to meet the conditions imposed by the founder of the Rhodes scholarships than is Mr. Hubble.
1923 Nobel Laureate Robert Andrews Millikan”
THE RHODES COMMITTEE SELECTS HUBBLE AS ONE OF THE TWO AWARDED FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
HE SPENDS THE NEXT 4 YEARS AT ENGLAND’S OXFORD UNIVERSITY… AN EXPERIENCE THAT FOREVER
TRANSFORMS HIM.
Don Nicholson: “He fell in love with the British way of doing things. Their accent…
their riding britches, and the works.”
WHILE STUDYING LAW AT OXFORD, EDWIN CONFIDES TO HIS MOTHER HE IS GOING TO TAKE A DIFFERENT
CAREER PATH.
Edwin Hubble: “Work, to be pleasant, must be toward some great end, an end so great
that dreams of it, anticipation of it overcomes all aversion to labor. If only I find some
principle, for whose sake I could leave everything else and devote my life. Edwin Powell Hubble”
FOR HUBBLE, THAT LIFE IS IN ASTRONOMY.
Nicholson: “He saw the changes that were going on in astronomy. He got interested in it
and the interest became pretty consuming.”
WHILE PURSUING HIS DOCTORATE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, HUBBLE LANDS A JOB AT THE WORLD’S
LARGEST TELESCOPE. Nicholson: A lot of spectroscopy has been done with it. My father discovered
three of Jupiter's satellites. DON NICHOLSON’S FATHER, SETH, WAS ONE OF THE ASTRONOMERS ON
STAFF DURING THE EARLY DAYS OF MOUNT WILSON….
Nicholson: “Mount Wilson was, without a question, the preeminent observatory in the
world for about the first half of the last century. An observatory that was designed
not to do that kind of thing that had been done for centuries before but the so called
new astronomy. What we largely call cosmology today. No other observatory in the world had
the equipment, had the staff that Mt. Wilson had.”
BUT HUBBLE’S CAREER AT MT WILSON HAS TO WAIT. EDWIN’S BELOVED ENGLAND IS ENTRENCHED
IN WORLD WAR I.
Christianson: “He was haunted by the images of the gifted young men he had known at Oxford…
now their corpses lay scattered along the Western Front. Dale E. Christianson”
HE JOINS THE ALLIED EFFORT BUT NEVER SEES COMBAT. EDWIN RETURNS HOME AND FOCUSES ON
INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS OF DUST AND GLOWING GASES.
Hubble: My program, in short, is an attempt to find all I possibly can concerning the
nature, form, and location of the galactic nebulae and their relation to the stars involved.
Edwin Powell Hubble”
IN OCTOBER OF 1923, HUBBLE TURNS HIS ATTENTION TO THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA. HE DISCOVERS THE
FIRST VARIABLE STAR IN THE NEBULA THAT COULD BE USED TO CALCULATE ITS DISTANCE FROM EARTH.
HUBBLE ESTIMATES ANDROMEDA TO BE AT LEAST A MILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY…
HE THEN APPLIES THE SAME TECHNIQUE TO OTHER SPIRAL NEBULAE. AND DISCOVERS THAT OUR UNIVERSE
EXTENDS FAR BEYOND OUR LOCAL MILKY WAY.
Owen: These objects had to be at a very great distance larger than any distances that had
been proposed up to that time. This was stunning announcement.
WHAT’S MORE, HE FINDS THAT OUR IMMENSE UNIVERSE IS GROWING EVEN LARGER… THIS EXPANSION RATE
IS LATER COINED THE HUBBLE CONSTANT. THIS NOTION OF AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE BECOMES THE
FOUNDATION OF THE “BIG BANG” THEORY WHICH EXPLAINS HOW THE UNIVERSE BEGAN.
Owen: “I think that having the Hubble Space Telescope really seals the fame for Edwin
Hubble and it does keep his name in the forefront and it helps him to be one of those people
that really gets remembered from the 20th Century.”
A CENTURY THAT’S SEEN BOTH A MAN AND A TELESCOPE NAMED HUBBLE… TRANSFORM OUR VIEW OF THE
COSMOS FROM A SMALL AND STATIC ISLAND OF STARS TO A VAST AND GROWING OCEAN OF GALAXIES.
FROM THE SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE IN BALTIMORE, MD, I’M MARY ESTACION.