Edwin Hubble explained to kids
Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who played a pivotal role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and is generally regarded as one of the most important observational cosmologists of the 20th century. Hubble's law, the observational discovery that galaxies are redshifted in proportion to their distance from Earth, provided one of the first pieces of evidence that the universe is expanding.
Born in Marshfield, Missouri, Hubble moved to Wheaton, Illinois, in 1900, where he attended Wheaton College. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in 1910 and began graduate studies at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago. After a year of studies, he transferred to Harvard College Observatory, where he worked under the supervision of Harlow Shapley. In 1913, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and spent the next year studying at the University of Oxford.
Upon his return to the United States, Hubble began work at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. In 1923, he identified what would later be known as the Andromeda Nebula as a distinct spiral nebula, and in 1929 he published a paper showing that the redshift of distant galaxies was proportional to their distance from Earth—laying the foundation for the expanding universe hypothesis. Hubble's discoveries played a key role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and shaping our understanding of the cosmos. He died in 1953 at the age of 64.