Page 29 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

The 100-inch Hooker telescope at EDWIN HUBBLE’S
the Mount Wilson Observatory 9
used by Hubble to calculate TELESCOPE
galaxy distances and prove the
expansion of the universe
The instrument that helped
a First World War veteran establish
that the universe is expanding
8 MRS RÖNTGEN’S RING Not many people could make Albert Einstein

The jewel in the crown of the world’s first X-ray image admit he had made a mistake, but Edwin
Hubble (1889–1953) was one of them. After
serving as a soldier in the First World War – his
Academic articles rarely mention labelled X to indicate his bafflement. lab nickname was ‘The Major’ – Hubble went
scientists’ families, but this photo- “I have seen my death,” she ex- to the Mount Wilson Observatory in California,
graph suggests that 19th-century claimed prophetically when she was where he used the world’s largest telescope
wives may often have been involved shown her bones with their ghostly to discover nebulae lying far beyond our
in research projects. coating of flesh. She was right – this own galaxy.
When Wilhelm Röntgen (1845– weightless, electrically neutral To measure the cosmos, Hubble needed
1923) stumbled across a mysterious radiation would often prove fatal. Yet an astronomical ruler, and he borrowed one
type of radiation, he was a conscien- within a few years, X-rays had entered invented by Henrietta Leavitt, a mathematical
tious German professor methodically the repertoire of fairground perform- drudge or human computer based at Harvard.
repeating some earlier experiments. ers. As one magazine wrote: “I’m full Like countless other intelligent women in this
While checking his apparatus of daze; Shock and amaze; For pre-electronic era, she was sufficiently
to make sure it was now-a-days; I hear desperate for work to tolerate long hours and
light-proof, he noticed they’ll gaze; Thru’ low wages, and through tedious calculations
a strange shimmering cloak and gown – and she showed how flashing stars can be used to
some distance away. even stays; These estimate stellar distances.
Röntgen then set naughty, naughty Thanks to Leavitt, Hubble produced
about a systematic Röntgen Rays.” his own graph proving that the further away
investigation, eating Anna Bertha a galaxy is, the faster it is racing away from
GETTY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY weeks. hand captured in previously refused to accept – that the
the Earth. This diagram confirmed a conse-
and sleeping in his
Röntgen’s ringed
quence of relativity theory that Einstein had
laboratory for several
the world’s first
A fortnight after his
universe started out as a small dense cluster
X-ray photograph,
and has been expanding ever since. Although
initial discovery, he
in 1895. Bertha’s
asked his wife, Anna
Einstein was converted, other scientists
husband, Wilhelm,
disagreed; ironically, the expression ‘big bang’
Bertha, to hold her
won a Nobel Prize
hand in the path of
outspoken opponents.
research
the rays that he
The Story of Science & Technology in 1901 for his was coined by one of the theory’s most 29