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Gale E. Christianson - General Colloquium
January 15, 2004
Gale E. Christianson
Distinguished Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History
Indiana State University
[Author of eight books, including biographies of Isaac Newton, Loren Eiseley, and Edwin Hubble. Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Huntington Library Fellowship, and research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Philosophical Society, among others. He teaches a University Honors course titled "Science and Society," as well as "History and Historians" and "Studies in Ancient Civilizations."]
Title: Edwin Hubble: An Astronomer's Life
Edwin Powell Hubble is generally recognized as the greatest astronomer of the twentieth century. Working atop California's Mount Wilson with the incomparable 100-inch Hooker telescope designed and built by George Ellery Hale, Hubble succeeded in proving that the Milky Way galaxy is but one of untold billions of such star formations; that the universe in which we live is not static but dynamic and expanding; and that matter is fairly evenly spread over great swaths of the firmament. This presentation by Hubble's biographer will trace the astronomer's life from childhood through the years of discovery in the 1920s and '30s. The talk will be illustrated with numerous slides tracing the arch of Hubble's personal and professional life.