Milton Humason

Milton Humason

During the early years of the 20th century, the world’s largest telescope, destined to discover the red shift of remote galaxies, was being built on Mount Wilson, overlooking what were then the clear skies of Los Angeles. Large pieces of the telescope had to be hauled to the top of the mountain, a job for mule teams. A young mule skinner named Milton Humason helped to transport mechanical and optical equipment, scientists, engineers and dignitaries up the mountain. Humason would lead the column of mules of mules on horseback, his white terrier standing just behind the saddle, in front paws on Humason’s shoulders.

The young man was a tobaccochewing roustabout, a superb gambler and pool player and what was later called a ladies’ man. In his formal education, Humason had never gone beyond the eighth grade. But he was bright and curious, and naturally inquisitive about the equipment he had laboriously carted to the heights. He was keeping company with the daughter of one of the observatory engineers, a man who harboured reservations about his daughter seeing a young man who had no higher ambition than to be a mule skinner.

Edwin Hubble provided the final demonstration that the spiral nebulae were in fact “island universes”. Image : Spiral © Elena

So Humason took odd jobs at the observatory – electrician’s assistant, janitor, swabbing the floors of the telescope he had helped to build. One evening, so the story goes, the night telescope assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care with the instruments that he soon became a permanent telescope operator and observing aide.

After World War I, there came to Mount Wilson the soon-to-be famous Edwin Hubble – brilliant, polished, gregarious outside the astronomical community, with an English accent acquired during a single year as Rhodes scholar at Oxford. It was Hubble who provided the final demonstration that the spiral nebulae were in fact “island universes”, distant aggregations of enormous numbers of star, like our own Milky Way Galaxy. Hubble had figured out the stellar standard candle required to measure the distances to the galaxies.

Hubble and Humason hit it off splendidly, a perhaps unlikely pair who worked together at the telescope harmoniously. Following a lead by the astronomer V. M. Slipher at Lowell Observatory, they began measuring the spectra of distant galaxies. It soon became clear that Humason was better able to obtain high-quality spectra of distant galaxies than any professional astronomer in the world. He became a full staff member of the Mount Wilson Observatory, learned many of the scientific underpinnings of his work and died rich in the respect of the astronomical community.

(By Carl Sagan)