This essay was written by a 5th grader
Edwin Hubble was born November 29th, 1889 in Marshfield, Missouri. He was the son of Virginia Lee Hubble and John P. Hubble. His father was an agent in a fire insurance firm. In 1898, his family moved to Chicago, Illinois where he attended Wheaton High School. He excelled in both academics and sports. In fact, he broke the Illinois State high jump record. He graduated Wheaton High School at the age of 16 in 1906. He received an academic scholarship to the University of Chicago. There, he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. In 1910, Edwin Hubble graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in mathematics and astronomy. Not only that, he was a six foot two inch amateur heavyweight boxer.
In 1910, Edwin Hubble won a Rhodes Scholarship. After that, he went to England where he attended Queen’s College at the University of Oxford. He also continued his athletics, excelling in the broad jump, high jump, shot put, and running. He then returned to the United States in 1913 to practice law where his family was living in Louisville, Kentucky. After Hubble got bored with law, he returned to the University of Chicago to work towards his Ph.D. in astronomy, which he finally received in 1917.
Hubble made observations from a telescope at Yerkes institution. Edwin B. Frost, the observatory’s director, supervised him. Hubble’s work was inspired by a lecture he attended at Northwestern University. Vesto M. Slipher, the man who gave the presentation, gave evidence that spiral nebulae, or stars that are not known, had high radial speeds. He found spiral nebulae that were moving at faster speeds than stars generally moved. With this evidence, he guessed that the nebulae were not part of the Milky Way.
Edwin Hubble also met George Ellery Hale at Yerkes institution. George was the founder of Yerkes Observatory. When George had heard of Hubble, he asked him to join the Mount Wilson Observatory Staff in 1916, in Pasadena, California after he earned his Ph.D. George was also the director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Unfortunately, World War I delayed Hubble’s taking. He joined World War I in 1917, with the rank of a major. In 1919, after he got discharged from the war, he joined Mount Wilson Observatory, where he stayed for the rest of his life. At the observatory, they had the two largest telescopes in the world at that time. There was a 60-inch reflector and a 100-inch telescope.
Edwin Hubble’s first accomplishment at Mount Wilson was the discovery of galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Using research done in October 1923, Hubble was able to recognize a type of variable star known as a Cepheid in the Andromeda nebula, also known as the Andromeda galaxy today. He estimated the distance to the Cepheid in the Andromeda to be about one million light years. This proved that there were other galaxies beyond the Milky Way since the Milky Way was 100,00 light years. He soon figured out the distances to nine galaxies. Hubble’s work was announced on December 1924, at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society, setting one of the greatest scientific debates of that era. World War II interrupted Hubble’s work again. After the war when he rejoined Mount Wilson he continued his research of galaxies.
Edwin Hubble died on September 28, 1953 in San Marino, California. He died of cerebral thrombosis. The Hubble space telescope was named after him. His inventions and observations will always be remembered.