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By Root 450 0

him that pitch-black winter evening, the starry wonders he beheld, lasted a lifetime. Two years later his family moved to the Chicago area, eventually settling in the village of Wheaton, Illinois, just west of the city. In high school Ed, as he was known to his friends, blossomed, regularly maintaining an A average and excelling in track, football, and basketball. The two areas in which he was downgraded a few times came in “application” and “deportment,” as he wasn't afraid to argue with his teachers in class. With his peers, he remained aloof and at times arrogant—both a dreamer and schemer. “He always seemed to be looking for an audience to which he could expound some theory or other,” recalled a childhood friend. Two years younger than most of his classmates, he may have been putting on a knowing front to appear older and more self-assured.

Graduating in 1906 at the age of sixteen, Hubble was awarded a scholarship to the University of Chicago, partly due to his superb athletic skills. But what he would major in became a contentious issue. Never forgetting his childhood experience with his grandfather's telescope, Hubble earnestly desired to study astronomy, but his father, a practical man, wanted his son to take up the law. According to one of Hubble's sisters, John Hubble considered being an astronomer an “outlandish” career choice. Hubble compromised by taking science classes—mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology—as well as the prerequisite courses in the classics, including heavy doses of Greek and Latin, that would prepare him for a legal career.

In regard to learning science, the timing for Hubble was perfect. Though a relatively new institution, the University of Chicago had already attracted two top physicists, Albert Michelson and Robert Millikan, who would go on to receive Nobel Prizes for their seminal work. And the Yerkes Observatory, affiliated with the university, offered one of the best telescopes then in existence. The early 1900s was a time, Hubble later recalled, when the world was astir: “Motor cars, at last, were successfully competing with horses. Airplanes were trying their wings. Bleriot had just flown the English channel, and…the wireless was groping its way over the map. Marconi…transmitted a message from Ireland to Buenos Aires, 6000 miles away… Technology strides across the modern stage like some gigantic, streamlined god.”

Edwin Hubble (left) in 1909 with a teammate on the

University of Chicago track team (Reproduced by permission

of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California)

Hubble inhaled the charged air of this exhilarating era deeply. A classmate described him as being a “whiz” at calculus, who “often utterly dumfounded” the professor. By the end of his sophomore year he was singled out as the best physics student. He also participated in track (though seldom winning) but did better in basketball, as his exceptional height for the day (six feet two inches) gave him an advantage playing center. He and his teammates were national champions in 1909. Moreover, Hubble did some boxing at an off-campus gym, becoming so good as an amateur heavyweight that Chicago promoters were eager for him to turn professional (or so he claimed). Such diverse activities and coursework may have been all part of a plan, for early on he had set his sights on obtaining a Rhodes Scholarship. Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist who made his fortune mining South African diamonds, had set up the program to strengthen the relationship between Great Britain and the United States. Every year, in each state, a young man was chosen to attend Oxford University in England for postgraduate studies. In his will Rhodes stipulated that Rhodes scholars should be bachelors between nineteen and twenty-five, good in academics but not “mere bookworms.” Each was to be a manly chap, exhibiting a “moral force of character” and proficient in both athletics and leadership. Hubble made sure that his accomplishments in college covered all the bases. In his senior year, he even served as vice president of his