1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:08,000 Over the last century, astronomers have discovered many new and mysterious cosmic objects 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:15,000 such as quasars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and distant exoplanets. 3 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:23,000 Recent discoveries may be impressive, but in just a few remarkable years in the 1920s, 4 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:29,000 one man single-handedly changed our perception of our place in the Universe. 5 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:35,000 His name was Dr Edwin Powell Hubble. 6 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:02,000 Born in Missouri in 1889, Edwin Powell Hubble developed an early passion for astronomy 7 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:07,000 after receiving his first telescope when he was just eight years old. 8 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:18,000 In 1917, whilst working on his doctorate, Hubble received a life-changing job offer from George Ellery Hale, 9 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:22,000 founder of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. 10 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:26,000 But, the opportunity came at a bad time 11 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:32,000 — the United States had just entered World War One and Hubble enlisted in the military. 12 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:42,000 In 1919, Major Hubble returned from the war and immediately travelled to the Mount Wilson Observatory. 13 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:48,000 Still in uniform, he arrived and announced that he was ready to start observing. 14 00:01:53,000 --> 00:02:01,000 In 1923, Hubble made his first important discovery using the most advanced technology of the time 15 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:05,000 — the 2.5-metre Hooker Telescope. 16 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:10,000 Measuring the distance to pulsating stars known as Cepheid variables, 17 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:14,000 he discovered that they reside in galaxies outside our own. 18 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:22,000 At the time, the prevailing view was that the Universe consisted only of the Milky Way Galaxy. 19 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:26,000 Hubble’s discovery that our galaxy is just one of many 20 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:30,000 forever changed the way we view our place in the Universe. 21 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:43,000 Following this groundbreaking discovery, Hubble began to sort and classify the galaxies he discovered. 22 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:46,000 He arranged them according to their visual appearance 23 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:53,000 — into spirals, ellipticals, lenticulars and those with an irregular appearance. 24 00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:02,000 This became known as the Hubble sequence and it is still the most popular system for classifying galaxies. 25 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:10,000 Hubble’s greatest achievement came in 1929, 26 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:18,000 when he determined that the light we receive from galaxies is redder the further away they are from us. 27 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:26,000 From this he was able to deduce that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes. 28 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:31,000 Named Hubble's Law, the observational discovery of this relationship 29 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:36,000 overturned the conventional view of a static Universe 30 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:40,000 and demonstrated that the Universe itself was expanding 31 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:46,000 — providing the first observational evidence for the Big Bang theory. 32 00:03:52,000 --> 00:04:00,000 Hubble spent the later part of his career campaigning for astronomy to be recognised as an area of physics 33 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:02,000 by the Nobel Prize Committee. 34 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:11,000 The committee finally made astronomical work eligible for the Physics Prize in 1953, 35 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:16,000 but Hubble was never to know, as he had died just a few months earlier. 36 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:25,000 Had the decision come sooner, Hubble may well have lived to receive one. 37 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:37,000 Thirty years after Edwin Hubble’s death, NASA and the European Space Agency 38 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:42,000 christened their new space telescope after Edwin Hubble. 39 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:47,000 Hubble was the obvious choice when naming a new observatory 40 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:50,000 that would revolutionise the field of astronomy. 41 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:57,000 Edwin Hubble changed our perception of the Universe and our place within it, 42 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:04,000 and his spirit of discovery lives on today through the Hubble Space Telescope. 43 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:10,000 Transcribed by ESA/Hubble, Translated by ---