Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Inventory of the Edwin Powell Hubble Papers, 1900-1989
HUB 1-1098
No online items
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: Edwin Powell Hubble Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1900-1989
Collection number: HUB 1-1098
Creator:
Hubble, Edwin Powell
Extent: 1300 pieces, plus ephemera (reprints and other magazines containing articles about Hubble, a scrapbook, newspaper
Repository: The
Huntington Library
San Marino, California 91108
Language:
English.
Collection is open to qualified researches by prior application through the Reader
Services Department. For more information please go to following
URL.
In order to quote from, publish, or reproduce any of the manuscripts or visual materials,
researchers must obtain formal permission from the office of the Library Director. In
most instances, permission is given by the Huntington as owner of the physical property
rights only, and researchers must also obtain permission from the holder of the literary
rights In some instances, the Huntington owns the literary rights, as well as the
physical property rights. Researchers may contact the appropriate curator for further
information.
[Identification of item], Edwin Powell Hubble Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino,
California.
Edwin Powell Hubble, an observational astronomer, was born November 20, 1889, in
Marshfield Missouri. He attended the University of Chicago (1906-1910), where he studied
physics and astronomy, and at Queen's College, Oxford University, where, as a Rhodes
Scholar, he received a B.A. in Jurisprudence in 1912. After a year as a high school
teacher in New Albany, Indiana, Hubble returned to the University of Chicago in 1914 to
do graduate work in astronomy under Edwin Brant Frost at the Yerkes Observatory.
Completing his Ph.D. in 1917, Hubble immediately joined the U.S. Army, serving as an
officer in the infantry from 1917 to 1919. In 1919, Hubble joined the staff of the Mount
Wilson Observatory, a position he held until his death on September 28, 1953. Hubble
married Grace Burke, a graduate of Stanford University, on February 26, 1924.
Although Hubble's earliest astronomical observations concerned galactic nebulae, from
1922 on Hubble began to use the 100-inch reflector at the Mount Wilson Observatory to
view what are now called galaxies (Hubble used the term "extragalactic nebulae"). In
1924, Hubble published "Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae," which contained the first
observational evidence that the nebulae were beyond our own stellar system. In 1926,
Hubble presented a system for the classification of galaxies (elliptical, spiral, barred
spiral, or irregular). The classification system still in use is based upon the scheme
proposed by Hubble. By the late 1920s Hubble began to focus his attention on the
determination of an extragalactic distance scale. Combining twenty-four distances he had
calculated with the corresponding redshifts, Hubble discovered a linear relation between
the distance of distant galaxies and their speeds of recession from us. This relation,
known as Hubble's Law, provided the first observational evidence of the expansion of the
universe and supported what others had predicted on the basis of Einstein's theory of
general relativity. In the 1930s, Hubble studied the distribution of galaxies in the sky
and discovered that their distribution was uniform, a conclusion which supported the
argument that galaxies are the framework of the universe.
Hubble's astronomical career was interrupted by World War II. From 1942 to 1946 he served
as Chief of Ballistics and Director of the Supersonic Wind Tunnels Laboratory at the
Ballistics Resarch Laboratories, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. For this service,
Hubble was awarded the Medal of Merit.
After the war, Hubble returned to the Mount Wilson Observatory where he became Chairman
of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories Research Committee. Hubble spent much of
his time on plans for the use of the 200-inch Hale Telescope, which he was the first to
use.
In addition to his observational astronomy, Hubble pursued other interests. An avid
student of the history of science and philosophy as well as an ardent Anglophile, Hubble
was elected Trustee of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery upon the death of
George Ellery Hale in 1938. In the 1930s, Hubble recognized the inevitability of war with
Germany and in the months before the U.S. entered the war he used his notoriety and
powers as a public speaker to urge U.S. participation on the side of the United Kingdom.
Also an ardent and skilled dry fly fisherman, Hubble spent many vacations in the Rocky
Mountains and on the banks of the River Test in England.