20th November: Edwin Hubble

Edwin Hubble the astronomer was born on this date in 1889. Some things you may not know about him:

1. As a young man, Hubble was a keen sportsman. He excelled at Baseball, football, Basketball, and athletics. He led the University of Chicago's basketball team to their first conference title in 1907, won seven first places and a third place in a single high school track and field meet in 1906, and set the state high school record for the high jump in Illinois.
2. The only subject at school he didn't get good grades for was spelling.
3. Although his fist love was astronomy, he studied law at university because that's what his dying father wanted him to do. He also took courses in literature and Spanish as well as a few science courses. A career in law didn't interest him at all, so he became a teacher for a while and then, at 25, set out to become a professional astronomer.
4. When the US entered World War I, Hubble rushed through his PhD dissertation so he could volunteer, and rose to the rank of Major, although his division never saw any actual combat.
5. His discovery that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from the earth, implying the universe is expanding (Hubble's Law) had previously been noted by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest/astronomer, but his paper hadn't been so well publicised. Some scientists think that Hubble's Law should really be called "Lemaître's law".
6. Hubble discovered the asteroid 1373 Cincinnati on August 30, 1935.
7. As well as the Hubble Space Telescope, also named after him are a crater on the Moon and Asteroid 2069 Hubble.
8. He never won a Nobel Prize. This was because astronomy was not, in his day, classed as a branch of physics, but as a completely separate science. He campaigned for astronomy to be classed as physics so that he and his colleagues might become eligible for a Nobel Prize. Only after his death did the Nobel Committee agree that astronomical work would be eligible for the physics prize. It's likely that if he had not died suddenly in 1953, he would have won the prize that year - but Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously.
9. A famous quote by Edwin Hubble goes: "Equipped with his five senses man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science".
10. After his death, no funeral was held, and nobody knows where he is buried, because his wife never told.