#OnThisDay in National Historic Landmark History, December 30, 1924: Astronomer Edwin Hubble’s discovery of extragalactic nebulae was announced at the 33rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, DC. Hubble’s breakthrough research demonstrated that spiral nebulae are actually galaxies and that the Milky Way is only one of many galaxies in the universe. Edwin Powell Hubble was born on November 20, 1889. He grew up one of nine children in Wheaton, Illinois. After graduating with a liberal arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1910, he spent three years in the United Kingdom as a Rhodes scholar, studying Roman and English law at Queens College, Oxford. In 1913, he returned to the United States and moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he passed the bar examination and began practicing law. Hubble did not enjoy life as an attorney and in 1914 he returned to the University of Chicago to pursue a PhD in astronomy. After graduation, Hubble worked with George Ellory Hale at the Mount Wilson Observatory. His time in that position was cut short by his decision to enlist when the United States entered World War I in 1917. Hubble was injured in the last days of the war, but upon discharge he resumed his career in astronomy. Edwin Hubble was an observational astronomer. Using the 100-inch Mt. Wilson reflecting telescope and later, the 200-inch Mt. Palomar instrument, he described what he saw, that the universe is populated by millions upon millions of individual island universes, that these nebulae can be classified according to their shape, and that galaxies are moving away from each other and from observers on earth. The results of his research had a major impact on cosmology. His observation that the extragalactic nebulae are moving away from each other lies at the heart of the big bang theory of the creation of the universe. His contention that the velocity of recession increases as distance increases implied that it is possible that galaxies have reached the speed of light and have thus passed into a realm from which their light can never reach the earth. Hubbles research, in short, not only produced remarkable data about the universe but it also stimulated whole new questions pertaining to the nature of the cosmos. The Edwin Powell Hubble House was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 8, 1976. Located in San Marino, California, this two-story California Mission style stucco house was Hubbles home from 1925, when it was built, until his death in 1953. It remains in private ownership.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 13:15:00 +0000
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