Biography of edwin hubble
Edwin Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope has given humanity an aperture to the universe for more than three decades. Its discoveries have fundamentally enhanced our understanding of the cosmos. This legacy reflects the work of the telescope’s namesake, renowned 20th century astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble. Like the Hubble Space Telescope, Edwin Hubble’s discoveries transformed the frontier of scientific knowledge. His work took us beyond the Milky Way and placed us in an ever-expanding universe with a myriad of galaxies beyond our own.
Born on November 20, 1889 in Marshfield, Missouri, Hubble spent his youth honing athletic skills in basketball, football, baseball, track, and boxing, while mentally feeding his curiosity through science fiction novels. Hubble’s innate fascination with the world around him foretold a lifetime of exploration. He entered the University of Chicago in 1906 as an undergraduate, earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and astronomy. He briefly deviated from his path of exploration, largely fueled by his father’s expectations, to study law at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. But his deep longing to pursue a career in the sciences outweighed his father’s visions, and Hubble switched gears and obtained a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1914, setting his focus on the heavens.
Destined for the cosmos, Hubble’s journey led him to Mount Wilson Observatory in California and the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, the world’s largest at the time. Hubble used the 100-inch telescope to observe faint, fuzzy, cloud-like patches of light broadly labeled nebulae. His observations brought these fuzzy patches into focus, and in the process transformed the field of cosmology.
Up until the early 20th century, our perception of the cosmos fell within the bounds of the Milky Way. Although astronomers speculated about the existence of other galaxies in our universe, they had no observable evidence of them. It wasn’t until Hubble pointed American astronomer (1889–1953) This article is about the astronomer. For the politician, see Edwin N. Hubbell. For the jazz trombonist, see Eddie Hubble. Edwin Hubble Portrait by Johan Hagemeyer, 1931 Edwin Powell Hubble Marshfield, Missouri, U.S. San Marino, California, U.S. Grace Burke Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. Hubble proved that many objects previously thought to be clouds of dust and gas and classified as "nebulae" were actually galaxies beyond the Milky Way. He used the strong direct relationship between a classical Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period (discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt) for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances. Hubble confirmed in 1929 that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from Earth, a behavior that became known as Hubble's law, although it had been proposed two years earlier by Georges Lemaître. The Hubble law implies that the universe is expanding. A decade before, the American astronomer Vesto Slipher had provided the first evidence that the light from many of these nebulae was strongly red-shifted, indicative of high recession velocities. Hubble's name is most wide "I knew that even if I were second or third rate, it was astronomy that mattered." This sentence, written by Edwin Hubble recalling his youth, tells us a lot about the man. A man who eventually broke the promise made to his father and followed the path dictated by his passion. As a result of Hubble's work, our perception of mankind's place in the Universe has changed forever: humans have once again been set aside from the centre of the Universe. When scientists decided to name the Space Telescope after the founder of modern cosmology the choice could not have been more appropriate. Edwin Hubble was born in Missouri in 1889, the son of an insurance executive, and moved to Chicago nine years later. At his high school graduation in 1906, the principal said: "Edwin Hubble, I have watched you for four years and I have never seen you study for ten minutes." He paused, leaving young Edwin on tenterhooks a moment longer, before continuing: "Here is a scholarship for the University of Chicago." This high school scholarship was also awarded to another student by mistake, so the money had to be halved and Edwin had to supply the rest. He paid his expenses by tutoring, working in the summer and, in his junior year, by obtaining a scholarship in physics and working as a laboratory assistant. He finally obtained a degree in Mathematics and Astronomy in 1910. A tall, powerfully built young man, Hubble loved basketball and boxing, and the combination of athletic prowess and academic ability earned him a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. There, a promise made to his dying father, who never accepted Edwin's infatuation for astronomy, led him to study law rather than science, although he also took up Literature and Spanish. He studied Roman and English Law at Oxford and returned to the United States only in 1913. Here he passed the bar examinati
Edwin Hubble
Born
(1889-11-20)November 20, 1889Died September 28, 1953(1953-09-28) (aged 63) Alma mater Known for Spouse Awards Scientific career Fields Astronomy Institutions Branch United States Army Years of service 1918 Rank Major Unit 86th Division, 2nd Battalion, 343rd Infantry Regiment Battles / wars World War I
Edwin Powell Hubble
Biography
Edwin Hubble was a man who changed our view of the Universe. In 1929 he showed that galaxies are moving away from us with a speed proportional to their distance. The explanation is simple, but revolutionary: the Universe is expanding.
Hubble was born in Missouri in 1889. His family moved to Chicago in 1898, where at High School he was a promising, though not exceptional, pupil. He was more remarkable for his athletic ability, breaking the Illinois State high jump record. At university too he was an accomplished sportsman playing for the University of Chicago basketball team. He won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he studied law. It was only some time after he returned to the US that he decided his future lay in astronomy.
In the early 1920s Hubble played a key role in establishing just what galaxies are. It was known that some spiral nebulae (fuzzy clouds of light on the night sky) contained individual stars, but there was no consensus as to whether these were relatively small collections of stars within our own galaxy, the 'Milky Way' that stretches right across the sky, or whether these could be separate galaxies, or 'island universes', as big as our own galaxy but much further away. In 1924 Hubble measured the distance to the Andromeda nebula, a faint patch of light with about the same apparent diameter as the moon, and showed it was about a hundred thousand times as far away as the nearest stars. It had to be a separate galaxy, comparable in size our own Milky Way but much further away.
Hubble was able to measure the distances to only a handful of other galaxies, but he realised that as a rough guide he could take their apparent brightness as an indication of their distance. The speed with which a galaxy was moving toward or away from us was relatively easy to measure due to the Doppler shift of their light. Just as a sound of a racing car becomes lower as it speeds away from us, so the light from a galaxy becom Edwin Powell Hubble - The man who discovered the cosmos
Edwin Powell Hubble A promising student
The Rhodes scholar