![]() Nevertheless, they finally earned at least as much fame as they deserved, leaving historians to wonder about what they really believed. Three scientists exemplified the cautious behavior that we might like all scientists to display: indeed, they were so critical of their own ideas that they risked losing credit for them. But Voller's book shows otherwise, as he examines Milt Humason's essential contributions to our understanding of the expanding universe." - Daniel Lewis, Dibner Senior Curator, History of Science & Technology, The Huntington Library "Edwin Hubble has often been considered as an island of sorts-a lone wolf of astronomy. This grand story is inextricably interwoven with that of Albert Einstein, Willem de Sitter, and other great physicists of the era, all of whom took part in the staggering quest to make sense of the Big Bang and what followed. It then shows how despite all this, the two opposites eventually came together in the pursuit of something far greater than themselves. The book therefore traces their lives from their childhoods into their burgeoning careers, revealing how a World War and their own personal differences stood in the way of initial cooperation. The evolution of this dynamic duo's tenuous friendship and professional partnership is in many ways as intriguing as their groundbreaking work on the evolution of the universe. In this compelling book, science writer Ron Voller digs deep into how and why the two scientists continued to investigate their theory of universal expansion in the face of persistent doubt, contrary theories, and calamitous world events. The story of Hubble and Humason is one for the ages-and in particular, the Cosmic Age. Hubble's doctoral thesis was based on his studies of nebulae, but he found it frustrating because he knew that more definite information depended upon the availability of telescopes of greater light-gathering power and with better resolution. He had been particularly inspired by Henrietta Leavitt's work on the Cepheid variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds and later work by Harlow Shapley, Henry Russell, and Ejnar Hertzsprung on the distances of these stars from the Earth had demonstrated that the universe did not begin and end within the confines of our Galaxy. The mysterious gas clouds, known as the smaller and larger Magellanic Clouds, which had first been systematically catalogued by Charles Messier and called ‘nebulae’, were good extragalactic candidates and were of great interest to Hubble. At that time there was great interest in discovering what other structures, if any, lay beyond our Galaxy. While Hubble was working at the Yerkes Observatory, he made a careful study of nebulae, and attempted to classify them into intra- and extragalactic varieties. He was active in research until his last days, despite a heart condition, and died in San Marino, California, on 28 September 1953. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1940, and received the Presidential Medal for Merit in 1946. His research was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, when he served as a ballistics expert for the US War Department. Hubble worked at Mount Wilson for the rest of his career, and it was there that he carried out his most important work. He remained on active service in Germany until 1919, when he was able to return to the USA and take up the earlier offer made to him by Hale of a post as astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, where the 2.5-m/100-in reflecting telescope had only recently been made operational. In 1917 Hubble volunteered to serve in the US infantry and was sent to France at the end of World War I. When he returned to the USA in 1913, he was admitted to the Kentucky Bar, and he practised law for a brief period before returning to Chicago to take a research post at the Yerkes Observatory 1914-17. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1910, he became a Rhodes scholar at Queen's College, Oxford, where he took a degree in jurisprudence in 1912. He went to high school in Chicago and then attended the University of Chicago where his interest in mathematics and astronomy was influenced by George Hale and Robert Millikan. Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri, on 20 November 1889. He found the first evidence for the expansion of the universe, in accordance with the cosmological theories of Georges Lemaître and Willem de Sitter, and his work led to an enormous expansion of our perception of the size of the universe. US astronomer who studied extragalactic nebulae and demonstrated them to be galaxies like our own.
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