Edwin Hubble’s Doctoral Thesis: Making the Interdisciplinary Materials Accessible Using OCHRE

Edwin Hubble’s Doctoral Thesis: Making the Interdisciplinary Materials Accessible Using OCHRE

Daniel Babnigg, 3rd-Year, Astronomy & Astrophysics; Nicole Millan Ortiz, 2nd-Year, Math; Harper Learmonth, 4th-Year, Astronomy & Astrophysics

2024 URS

Rich Kron, Astronomy & Astrophysics

Prior to his esteemed career in extragalactic astronomy and cosmology, Edwin Hubble published his thesis, “Photographic Investigation of Faint Nebulae,” in 1920, a culmination of his doctoral work at The University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory. With the 24-inch reflecting telescope at Yerkes, he observed and classified over 500 “nebulae” from 7 distinct fields, effectively confirming certain “nebular” properties, before their later recognition as galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Though the thesis, itself, is publicly available, other, relevant materials to Hubble’s doctoral research aren’t as easily accessible, including the photographic plates he used for observation; letters and correspondence from his time at Yerkes; and the logbooks containing his notes and findings. We use OCHRE Data Service (Online Cultural and Historical Research Environment) to record, preserve, and upload the interdisciplinary elements of Hubble’s thesis in digital form. Specifically, we’ve been able to store: digitized and astrometric-calibrated glass plates from Hubble’s fields; associated metadata obtained from, both, the logbooks and the tables from his thesis, which have been digitized for comparison with modern catalogs; and transcribed correspondences, primarily between Hubble and Dr. Edwin Frost, which contextualize Hubble’s time at Yerkes Observatory. We find, then, that this tool — typically used as a database for humanistic and social science research and information — can be easily extended to the physical sciences. Ultimately, we aim to explore the facets of astronomical scientific growth — a deep-dive into the early career of one of history’s more prominent astronomers through application of an interdisciplinary data-processing tool.

Digital Abstract