Mark Cohen, Nederland.  Is this a great country or what? I get to write a column about whatever I want so long as I don’t get The Mountain-Ear sued.

Today I write about one of the great lawyers in history, Edwin Hubble. Hubble’s story starts at the beginning of time. You see, not all that long ago most western people believed God created the universe in about 5,000 B.C., and that he did it in six days.

Most people believed in a static universe, and therefore the question of whether it had a beginning was one of metaphysics or theology.

Then one day in 1929, Hubbell, a lawyer and a pretty good heavyweight boxer who sometimes messed around with telescopes, noticed that another galaxy was moving away from ours at an impressive speed. He turned his telescope in a different direction and saw another galaxy speeding away from ours. This happened several more times.  No matter what direction he looked, other galaxies were zooming away from us. “Hey Grace,” he shouted to his wife, “the universe is expanding.”

“That’s nice, dear,” his wife said. “Did you take out the trash?”

Hubbell theorized that there might have been a time when things in the universe had been much closer together. The question of the beginning of the universe was thrust into the realm of science.

Today, because of the insights of Hubbell and those who followed him, we know that the universe began about 13 billion years ago. At that time, all of the matter and energy of space was contained in a single infinitesimally small point. It was infinitely hot and infinitely dense, like some Fox News anchors, but then there was a Big Bang.

Hubble was born in Missouri in 1889. Tall and powerfully built, Hubble was a gifted athlete, participating in baseball, football, basketball, and track in high school. He won an academic scholarship to the University of Chicago and while there he won spots on the basketball and track teams. He earned a degree in mathematics and astronomy in 1910. A gifted boxer, promoters touted him as the next “Great White Hope” – a man who could beat the black heavyweight champ, Jack Johnson. The fight never took place, though some biographers claim Hubble fought the heavyweight champion of Europe and did well.

Hubble became a Rhodes Scholar and studied law at Oxford. Upon returning from Oxford in 1913, he practiced law, but he did not enjoy it. He then taught Spanish, physics, and math at an Indiana high school, where he also coached the basketball team.

In 1914, Hubble returned to the University of Chicago to study astronomy, earning his doctorate in 1917. He then enlisted in the army and was sent overseas, but by the time his division arrived in France, World War I was essentially over. In 1919, he moved to Cambridge to further study astronomy. He again served in the army during World War II, this time as the head of ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Upon returning from Cambridge, Hubble accepted a position at the Mount Observatory near Pasadena, California.  In 1925, he was the first to demonstrate the existence of other galaxies. Later, in 1929, he proved that the universe was expanding.

Hubble won many scientific honors, but during his life astronomers were ineligible for the Nobel Prize in physics. In 1990, the United States launched the Hubble Space Telescope, which is still orbiting Earth and functioning.

In 1949, Hubble suffered a heart attack while visiting Colorado. He never fully regained the stamina needed to spend all night in a freezing-cold observatory. Hubble died of a cerebral thrombosis in 1953.