The Day We Found the Universe (50 page)

170 “He always seemed to be looking for an audience to which he could expound some theory or other”: Christianson (1995), p. 31.

171 “outlandish” career choice: Ibid., p. 40.

171 Hubble compromised by taking science classes … as well as … classics: HUB, Box 25, undergraduate course book.

172 “Motor cars, at last, were successfully competing with horses”: HUB, Box 1, Folder 23, pp. 1–2.

172 “whiz” at calculus, who “often utterly dumfounded” the professor: HUB, Box 19, John Schommer to Grace Hubble, May 15, 1958.

172 best physics student: HUB, Box 25, “The Daily Maroon,” January 26, 1910.

172 Chicago promoters were eager for him to turn professional: HUB, Box 7, “University of Chicago, 1906–1910, 1914–1917,” p. 3.

172 Good in academics but not “mere bookworms” … “moral force of character”:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1911).

173 “man of magnificent physique, admirable scholarship, and worthy and lovable character”: HUB, Box 15, Millikan to Edmund James, January 8, 1910.

173 three years on an annual stipend of fifteen hundred dollars: HUB, Box 25, “The Daily Maroon,” January 26, 1910.

173 “considerable ability. Manly”: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), p. 4.

173 “had transformed [Hubble], seemingly, into a phony Englishman, as phony as his accent”: Christianson (1995), p. 64.

173 “I sometimes feel that there is within me, to do what the average man would not do”: Ibid., p. 67.

173 “Why not be first in Rome?”: HUB, Box 8, Grace's memoirs.

174 translating what may have been legal correspondence: Christianson (1995), p. 86.

174 All this time he was actually teaching at the high school in New Albany, Indiana … dedicated the school's 1914 yearbook to him: HUB, Box 22A.

174 “So I chucked the law”: HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.” Hubble was eventually awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of California in 1949.

175 “splendid specimen,” who showed “exceptional ability”: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), p. 5.

176 “Send us three hundred words expressing your ideas on the habitability of Mars”: Frost (1933), p. 217.

176 “Those who have visited a large observatory on such a night”: Ibid., p. 205.

176 “So you say that each of those points of light is a sun”: Ibid., p. 207.

177 Frost himself was slowly losing his eyesight due to cataracts: Christianson (1995), p. 95.

178 “Suppose them to be extra-sidereal [outside the Milky Way] and perhaps we see clusters of galaxies”: Hubble (1920), p. 75.

178 “But it shows clearly the hand of a great scientist groping toward the solution of great problems”: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), p. 7.

178 “questions await their answers for instruments more powerful than those we now possess”: Hubble (1920), p. 69.

178 “I have offered Hubbell [
sic
] a position with us at $1200. per year”: HP, Hale to Adams, November 1, 1916.

179 he didn't have the money to offer his graduating student a well-paid position: HP, Henry Gale to Adams, April 4, 1917.

179 Within days Hubble asked Frost for a letter of recommendation … a military reservation on Lake Michigan, north of Chicago: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), pp. 8–9.

179 “scimpy”: Christianson (1995), p. 101.

179 Hubble had already sent a letter: MWDF, Hubble to Hale, April 10, 1917.

179 “to renew as soon as you are able to accept it”: MWDF, Hale to Hubble, April 19, 1917.

180 “Stirring times”: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), p. 9.

180 rendered unconscious at one point by a shell exploding nearby: HUB, Box 7, Grace's memoir.

180 no “wound chevrons” were authorized: HUB, Box 25, discharge certificate.

180 “I barely got under fire”: Christianson (1995), p. 109.

180 posh dinner hosted by the best and the brightest of British astronomy: Ibid., p. 110.

181 “My interest has for the most part been with nebulae especially photographic study of the fainter ones”: MWDF, Box 159, Hubble to Hale, May 12, 1919.

181 “I had been hoping” … “as we expect to get the 100-inch telescope into commission very soon”: MWDF, Hale to Hubble, June 9, 1919.

181 arrived in New York on August 10: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), p. 11.

181 “Just demobilized. Will proceed Pasadena at once unless you advise to contrary”: MWDF, Hubble to Hale, August 22, 1919.

181 September 11, 1919: Christianson (1995), p. 122.

12. On the Brink of a Big Discovery—or Maybe a Big Paradox

182 He was a man of endless enthusiasms: It's been suggested that Hale suffered a severe form of manic depression, a psychiatric syndrome marked by periods of elevated mood, physical restlessness, and sharpened creative thinking, interlaced with bouts of depression. See Sheehan and Osterbrock (2000).

182 “a driving power which was given no rest until it had brought his plans and schemes to fruition”: Wright (1966), p. 17.

182 “He has reached a place where scientific work and honors are not enough”: Osterbrock (1993), p. 157.

182 In the summer of 1906 he spent a weekend at the home of John Hooker … secret of their mysterious nature: Wright (1966), pp. 252–53; Osterbrock (1993), p. 92.

183 Hale's younger brother, Will, once called George the greatest gambler in the world: Wright (1966), p. 184.

183 “We don't pay for this!”: Ibid., p. 254.

183 “that glass was in the bottom of the ocean”: Wright (1966), p. 263. Evelina Hale through these times fiercely protected her husband and wished the 100-inch glass disk gone in a letter dated December 24, 1910, to astronomer Walter Adams, who served as the Mount Wilson Observatory's acting director in Hale's absence. In that message she beseeched Adams to send no bad news to Hale during his recovery.

184 made a good case: See Sheehan and Osterbrock (2000), p. 105.

184 he initiated the grinding: Osterbrock (1993), p. 142.

184 “there was more publicity … than was desirable”: MWDF, Adams to Hale, July 5, 1917.

185 “To add to the gloom”: Adams (1947), p. 301.

185 first Hale then Adams returned … at 2:30 in the morning: Wright (1966), pp. 318–20.

185 “High in heaven it shone”: Noyes (1922), pp. 2–3.

186 “Very little has been done with it … because of the war contracts in the shop”: HUA, Shapley to R. G. Aitken, October 14, 1918.

186 Ritchey, for example, had to turn his attention to making lenses and prisms: Osterbrock (1993), pp. 144–45.

186 “In such an embarrassment of riches”: Hale (1922), p. 33.

187 took about an hour then to make the journey in a motorcar: HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

187 Seven days later Hubble tried out the 60-inch telescope … “striking changes have happened [in t] since 1916”: HUB, Box 29, Logbook; HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

187 “He was photographing at the Newtonian focus of the 60-inch”: Humason (1954), p. 291.

187 what he called his “magic mirror”: HUB, Box 1, “The Exploration of Space” lecture.

187 Hubble's first night on 100-inch: HUB, Box 29, Logbook.

188 The variable nebula soon became his observational “mascot”: This is according to Milton Humason. HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

188 each was entered into his official Observing Book: HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

188 got a paper published fairly quickly: Seares and Hubble (1920).

188 “to determine the relation of nebulae to the universe”: LWA, Hubble to Slipher, April 4, 1923.

188 “We are on the brink of a big discovery—or maybe a big paradox”: HUA, Russell to Shapley, September 17, 1920.

188 “I have just gone into the lecture room, pressed a button, and heard records”: LOA, Curtis Papers, Curtis to Campbell, January 26, 1922.

189 Hubble cultivated an air of sophistication and restraint: AIP, interview with Nicholas U. Mayall, June 3, 1976.

189 occasionally blow smoke rings out into the room: HUB, Box 7, Grace's memoir.

189 “stuffed shirt”: CA, interview with Jesse L. Greenstein by Rachel Prud'homme, February 25, March 16, and March 23, 1982.

189 “write an inter-office memo”: AIP, interview of Halton Arp by Paul Wright, July 29, 1975.

189 wearing jodhpurs, leather puttees, and a beret while observing: AIP, interview of Horace Babcock by Spencer Weart on July 25, 1977.

189 “Bah Jove” … “Missourian tongue” … “Hubble disliked van Maanen from the time he himself arrived on Mount Wilson” … “Hubble just didn't like people”: Shapley (1969), p. 57.

190 “conscientious slacker”: AIP, interview of Dorritt Hoffleit by David DeVorkin on August 4, 1979.

191 “lend some color to the hypothesis that the spirals are stellar systems”: Hubble (1920), p. 77.

191 the term
nongalactic
didn't mean the spirals were necessarily “outside our galaxy”: Hubble (1922), p. 166.

191 “half a dozen of the largest spirals in addition to Andromeda should be followed carefully for novae”: LWA, Hubble to Slipher, February 23, 1922.

192 “I must confess that I am rather dazed by [Hubble's] letter”: LWA, Wright to Slipher, March 7, 1922.

192 particularly fired up about a nebula classification scheme: LWA, Hubble to Slipher, February 23, 1922.

192 “pathologically shy around colleagues with whom he had little … contact”: Sandage (2004), p. 525.

193 “What a powerful instrument the 100-inch is in bringing out those desperately faint nebulae”: HUA, Shapley to Hubble, August 3, 1923.

194 “It appears to be a great star cloud that is at least three or four times as far away as the most distant of known globular clusters”: Shapley (1923b), p. 2.

194 “the most distant object seen by man, another universe of stars”: “A Distant Universe of Stars” (1924), p. x.

194 “neither galactic in size nor stellar in composition”: Shapley (1923a), p. 326.

194 “Eleven … are clearly Cepheids”: Hubble (1925b), p. 412.

194 “N.G.C. 6822 lies far outside the limits of the galactic system”: Ibid., p. 410.

194 “This was the astronomical observing experience at its best”: Sandage (2004), p. 178.

195 “You begin with deskwork”: Mayall (1954), p. 80.

195 Hale considered coffee “unwholesome”: HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

195 were offered two pieces of bread, two eggs, butter and jam: This regimen continued until 1955. Sandage described it as their “starvation rations.” Sandage (2004), pp. 191–92.

195 he washed his own dish afterward: Christianson (1995), p. 123.

196 “You knew where you stood with him”: HUB, Box 7, Grace Hubble interview with Humason.

196 Messier objects were as familiar to him as the alphabet: Mayall (1954), p. 80.

196 wispy nebula that Shapley had reported seeing on two occasions: HL, Adams Papers, Shapley to Adams, July 12, 1923.

196 “Shapley object is probably an accident”: HUB, 100-inch Logbook.

13. Countless Whole Worlds … Strewn All Over the Sky

199 a whine, a series of loud clicks, and then a final
clang
as the instrument was secured into place: HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

199 The famous Andromeda nebula, the target of choice: All details of Hubble's observations of Andromeda are taken from HUB, 100-inch Logbook.

200 numbering each nova and variable: HUB, Box 1, Hubble Addenda.

202 “Dear Shapley:—You will be interested to hear that I have found a Cepheid variable in the Andromeda Nebula”: HUA, Hubble to Shapley, February 19, 1924.

203 figuring out early on, soon after he arrived at Mount Wilson, that they were pulsating stars: Shapley (1914).

204 “Here is the letter that has destroyed my universe”: Payne-Gaposchkin (1984), p. 209.

204 “the crop of novae and of the two variable stars in the direction of the Andromeda nebula”: HUA, Shapley to Hubble, February 27, 1924.

205 “He was standing at the laboratory window, looking at a plate of Orion”: HUB, Box 7, Grace's memoir.

205 Hubble and Grace, now widowed, renewed their acquaintance: Osterbrock, Brashear, and Gwinn (1990), p. 14.

205 “Do you think you can stay up later than an astronomer?”: HUB, Box 7, “Hubble: A Biographical Memoir.”

206 with none of Hubble's family members in attendance: Over the succeeding years, Hubble withdrew even further from his family, as if wishing his midwestern roots would just wither away and die. His younger brother, Bill, a dairy farmer, took responsibility for his mother's care, allowing Edwin to pursue his dreams unimpeded. See Christianson (1995), pp. 98–99, 166.