Edwin Hubble Biography

Edwin Hubble was born in 1889 in Missouri. He attended University of Chicago for his undergraduate education, but then went to Oxford with a Rhodes scholarship. While he was there he studied law for a short time. Later he realized that being an attorney was not the job for him and he turned to astronomy. He even got so far as to open up a practice in Kentucky, but he shut it down. Once he decided to be an astronomer, he got hired to work at Mt. Wilson by George Ellory Hail. He was one of the spearheads for the institution of a huge telescope there. It was named the Hooker telescope and he ended up receiving an extraordinary amount of time with the telescope. He would stand at the telescope for hours at a time just to get the pictures he wanted. These images helped him realize that there are in fact galaxies outside of our galaxy. We are not alone. He also utilized the Cepheid variables to figure out brightness and while they were so dull he realized they must be galaxies. He also noticed that most of these observed galaxies were red shifted or moving away. This helped him prove that our universe is expanding. He died in 1953. His immense contributions to the study of our galaxy gave him the recognition of having the Hubble telescope that rotates our Earth named after him.