High school dropout corrects Einstein

The Bizgnus Podcast

• The greatest astronomer you’ve probably never heard of

• “Milton was a very humble guy”

(Total Recorded Time is 18:49)

You’d be stretching the definition when you called him a high school dropout. That’s because Milton Humason quit high school after just two days.

This teenage mule skinner guided mules up steep, rocky trails to the summit of Mount Wilson, east of Los Angeles, where what would then be the world’s most powerful telescope was being installed.

He was 30 years old and the best job he could find as a high school dropout was as a janitor at the observatory. But over the next decade he skyrocketed to becoming the world’s foremost observer and photographer of distant galaxies.

By the time he was 40, he had co-discovered the Big Bang Theory with Edwin Hubble, after whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named.

Did you catch the name? Biographer Ron Voller joins us for this episode of Bizgnus Interviews to correct that.

One of Einstein’s theories stated that the universe was static. Messrs. Hubble and Humason, using the telescope, proved that the universe is not static but expanding, thus disproving Einstein’s theory.

“Milton was a very humble guy,” Mr. Voller says. “He believed that Edwin Hubble should get the credit for the work, for the discovery. He believed in the discovery more tham Hubble did.”

Mr. Voller’s latest book, “Hubble, Humason and the Big Bang: The Race to Uncover the Expanding Universe,” (Springer Praxis Books) tells Milton Humason’s amazing story,

He is also the author of “The Muleskinner and the Stars” (Springer 2015). Mr. Voller is working on his third book, “Bang! Goes the Universe” on cosmic origins and our understanding of them.

For more information: ronvoller.com.