Bullitt Lecture in Astronomy 2001 - Edwin Hubble: An Astronomer's Life

Speaker: Gale E. Christianson, Indiana State University

Abstract: Edwin Powell Hubble is regarded as the greatest astronomer of the 20th century. He was the first to prove that the Milky Way is but one of the countless galaxies in the universe, and he showed that the universe is expanding the first evidence that the universe began in a "Big Bang". Hubble was born in the late 19th century and was educated at the Universities of Chicago and Oxford. He taught high school and coached basketball in New Albany, Indiana, before leaving his mother's home in Louisville to pursue his love of astronomy. This illustrated lecture will chronicle his life and achievements by tracing his roots from an obscure midwestern village to the observatories on Mount Willson and Mount Palomar, to the launching of the great space telescope that bears his name.

Gale E. Christianson is Distinguished Professor of the College of Arts & Sciences at Indiana State University. The author of several books, "Edwin Hubble: Mariner of Nebulae", "Isaac Newton and His Times", and "Fox at the Wood's Edge: A Biography of Loren Pasley", and most recently, "Greenhouse: The 200-Year Story of Global Warming". Professor Christianson is a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of other research and writing awards.