Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953) - Father of observational cosmology

Edwin's mother was Virginia Lee James, from Virginia City, Nevada, and his father was John Powell Hubble, from Missouri. Edwin himself was born in Marshfield on November 20, 1889, during a visit of the parents to his grandparents and moved to Wheaton, Illinois, before his first birthday.

He studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Chicago and earned a bachelor of science degree in 1910. In the same year he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, under which he read Roman and English Law at Queen's College, Oxford.

In 1914 he returned to the University of Chicago for postgraduate work leading to his doctoral degree in astronomy.

Edwin Hubble was considered as the father of observational cosmology: he showed other galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way using 100-inch telescope at Mt Wilson. He identified individual stars in one of Wright and Kant’s nebulae, one of the largest of them, the “Great Andromeda Nebula”. It has this name because is seen in the sky region where it is located the constellation of Andromeda.

Hubble also developed classification system for galaxies and showed that the Universe is not static Edwin Hubble but expanding.

In 1929 he established the famous distance-velocity relation which is also called nowadays the law of redshift or Hubble’s law. The title of his paper reads: “A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae.”
Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953) - Father of observational cosmology