31 Facts About Edwin Hubble

Edwin Hubble played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology.

Edwin Hubble used the strong direct relationship between a classical Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances.

Edwin Hubble provided evidence that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from Earth, a property now known as Edwin Hubble's law, although it had been proposed two years earlier by Georges Lemaitre.

Edwin Hubble's name is most widely recognized for the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope, which was named in his honor, with a model prominently displayed in his hometown of Marshfield, Missouri.

Edwin Hubble was a gifted athlete, playing baseball, football, and running track in both high school and college.

Edwin Hubble won seven first places and a third place in a single high school track and field meet in 1906 and he played a variety of positions on the basketball court from center to shooting guard.

Edwin Hubble led the University of Chicago's basketball team to their first Big Ten Conference title in 1907.

In 1909, Edwin Hubble's father moved his family from Chicago to Shelbyville, Kentucky, so that the family could live in a small town, ultimately settling in nearby Louisville.

Edwin Hubble was a dutiful son, who despite his intense interest in astronomy since boyhood, acquiesced to his father's request to study law, first at the University of Chicago and later at Oxford.

Edwin Hubble's dissertation was titled "Photographic Investigations of Faint Nebulae".

Edwin Hubble volunteered for the United States Army and was assigned to the newly created 86th Division, where he served in 2nd Battalion, 343 Infantry Regiment.

Edwin Hubble rose to the rank of Major, and was found fit for overseas duty on July 9,1918, but the 86th Division never saw combat.

In 1919, Edwin Hubble was offered a staff position at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Mount Wilson Observatory, near Pasadena, California, by George Ellery Hale, the founder and director of the observatory.

Edwin Hubble remained on staff at Mount Wilson until his death in 1953.

Edwin Hubble worked as a civilian for US Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland during World War II as the Chief of the External Ballistics Branch of the Ballistics Research Laboratory during which he directed a large volume of research in exterior ballistics which increased the effective firepower of bombs and projectiles.

Edwin Hubble's work was facilitated by his personal development of several items of equipment for the instrumentation used in exterior ballistics, the most outstanding development being the high-speed clock camera, which made possible the study of the characteristics of bombs and low-velocity projectiles in flight.

Edwin Hubble found Cepheids in several nebulae, including the Andromeda Nebula and Triangulum Nebula.

Edwin Hubble's observations, made in 1924, proved conclusively that these nebulae were much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own; thus today they are no longer considered nebulae.

Edwin Hubble devised the most commonly used system for classifying galaxies, grouping them according to their appearance in photographic images.

Edwin Hubble arranged the different groups of galaxies in what became known as the Hubble sequence.

Edwin Hubble went on to estimate the distances to 24 extra-galactic nebulae, using a variety of methods.

In 1929 Edwin Hubble examined the relationship between these distances and their radial velocities as determined from their redshifts.

Edwin Hubble discovered the asteroid 1373 Cincinnati on August 30,1935.

In December 1941, Edwin Hubble reported to the American Association for the Advancement of Science that results from a six-year survey with the Mt.

Edwin Hubble married Grace Lillian Leib, daughter of John Patrick and Luella Burke, on February 26,1924.

Edwin Hubble was raised as a Protestant Christian but some of his later statements suggest uncertainty.

Edwin Hubble had a heart attack in July 1949 while on vacation in Colorado.

Edwin Hubble was cared for by his wife and continued on a modified diet and work schedule.

Edwin Hubble died of cerebral thrombosis on September 28,1953, in San Marino, California.

In 2011, the journal Nature reported claims that Edwin Hubble had played a role in the redaction of key parts of the translation of Lemaitre's 1927 paper, which stated what is called Edwin Hubble's Law and gave observational evidence for it.

Edwin Hubble spent much of the later part of his career attempting to have astronomy considered an area of physics, instead of being its own science.