Edwin Powell Hubble

Edwin Powell Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri in 1889. He was described as a tall, elegant, athletic man. Edwin's father was John P. Hubble, was an agent in a fire insurance firm, and his mother Virginia Lee James, was a homemaker and was a descendent of the English colonist Miles Standish.   Hubble was one of seven children in his family. Hubble was married in 1924 to Grace Burke Leib. 

 

Hubble attended high school in Chicago, Illinois. In 1910 he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and astronomy. Hubble was then awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford in England. There Hubble earned a law degree in 1912. In 1913 Hubble moved back to the United States and lived in Kentucky where his family was. In the next year Hubble taught high school and practiced law in Kentucky and Indiana. In 1914, Hubble moved to Wisconsin where he took a research post at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory.   Hubble made many important observations here like discovering a difference in nebulas and distant galaxies, discovered a Cepheid star in the Andromeda nebula now called the Great Andromeda Galaxy, located other nebulas outside our galaxy, had his own theory of nebulas being in galaxies a lot like ours called the island universe theory, divided galaxies up according to shape, measured the distance between Earth and the galaxies he studied, and he also measured galaxies' speeds compared to earth which related to the Doppler effect. In 1929 Hubble made possibly his most important discovery. Hubble compared distances of galaxies to the speed at which they were moving away from Earth. He found a very consistent correlation: “The farther a galaxy was from Earth, the faster it was receding.”   Hubble continued to study this because of its consistency and it was later named Hubble's Law. Hubble also concluded that the relationship between velocity and distance must mean the universe is expanding. Other scientists had made models of this theory but Hubble was the first to actually prove it. The relationship of the velocity of galaxies to their distance is called the Hubble constant. Using this, scientists could actually determine the age of the universe.

 

Hubble earned a Ph.D. degree in astronomy from the University of Chicago and received an invitation from astronomer George Hale to work at Mount Wilson Observatory in California.   Around that same time, Hubble volunteered to serve in World War I. He remained on active duty until 1919 leaving the Army in the rank of major. Later that year he excepted the offer at Mount Wilson where the Hooker Telescope was located. That telescope was the largest in the world until 1948.   Hubble would work at Mount Wilson Observatory for the rest of his career.   He would later serve in WWII where he was a ballistics expert for the U.S. Department of War.

 Hubble was an active researcher until his death in 1953. He was involved in the building of the Hale telescope, which was the largest telescope in the world from 1948 until 1990. The Hubble telescope, which went into orbit around earth in 1990, was named after Hubble and is still helping scientists make important discoveries today.