Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953)
Author of The Realm of the Nebulae
About the Author
As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Edwin Hubble was an exceptional boxer. His boxing abilities attracted the attention of a promoter who wanted to train him to fight the contemporary world heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. Hubble, however, resisted the temptations of the boxing show more ring and instead became a Rhodes scholar. He practiced law for a short time, and in 1914 he found his niche in astronomy, attending the Yerkes Observatory for graduate work. In 1919 Hubble became an astronomer at the Mt. Wilson Observatory, where he remained until 1948. From 1948 to 1953, he was an astronomer at Mt. Palomar Observatory. Hubble's research on galaxies led to his conclusion that galaxies are actually swarms of hundreds of billions of stars. Using his research and that of others (principally Milton Humason and Vesto M. Slipher), Hubble established the relation between redshift and distance, which showed that the universe is expanding. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Edwin Hubble [credit: Photograph by Margaret Harwood, courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives]
Works by Edwin Powell Hubble
Associated Works
Readings in Cosmology and Extragalactic Astronomy: Physics 361-01 Cosmology, Spring Semester 1995 (1995) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Hubble, Edwin Powell
- Birthdate
- 1889-11-20
- Date of death
- 1953-09-28
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Chicago (BS|1910) (PhD|1917)
The Queen's College, Oxford - Occupations
- astronomer
cosmologist - Organizations
- University of Chicago
Mount Wilson Observatory - Awards and honors
- Bruce Medal (1938)
Franklin Medal (1939)
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1940)
Legion of Merit (1946)
Rhodes Scholar
Hubble Space Telescope (show all 10)
Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1924)
Asteroid namesake "2069 Hubble"
Crater on Moon named in his honor
Hall of Famous Missourians (2003) - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Marshfield, Missouri, USA
- Places of residence
- Wheaton, Illinois, USA
Shelbyville, Kentucky, USA
Louisville, Kentucky, USA
New Albany, Indiana, USA
Pasadena, California, USA - Place of death
- San Marino, California, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
No modern astronomer made a more profound contribution to our understanding of the cosmos than did Edwin Hubble, who first conclusively demonstrated that the universe is expanding. Basing his theory on the observation of the change in distanct galaxies, called red shift, Hubble showed that this is a Doppler effect, or alteration in the wavelength of light, resulting from the rapid motion of celestial objects away from Earth. In 1935, Hubble described his principal observations and show more conclusions in the Silliman lectures at Yale University. These lectures were published the following year as "The Realm of the Nebulae," which quickly became a classic work. show less
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 12
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 87
- Popularity
- #211,167
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 9
