EDWIN HUBBLE

EDWIN HUBBLES

1914

Edwin Powell Hubble was the son of an insurance executive who grew up outside Chicago. He was more outstanding as an athlete than as a student, although he did earn good grades in every subject

EDWIN HUBBLES

1923

Hubble began his work at Mount Wilson just as the new 2.56-meter Hooker Telescope, the most powerful on Earth, was completed. With it, he was able to peer into the sky with greater detail than anyone had previously.

EDWIN HUBBLES

1924

Hubble then went on to discover Cepheids in multiple nebulae, and proved, in a 1924 paper called “Cepheids in Spiral Nebula,” that galaxies existed outside our own. Overnight, he became the most famous astronomer in the world, and people everywhere had to get used to the fact that the Universe was far vaster than anyone had imagined.

EDWIN HUBBLE

1936

In the course of five years, Edwin Hubble twice changed our understanding of the Universe, helping to lay the foundations for the Big Bang theory. First he demonstrated that the Universe was much larger than previously thought, then he proved that the Universe is expanding.