Muleskinner and the Stars

From a beginning as an untaught mule driver, astronomer Milton L. Humason went on to play a key role in the development of astrophysical cosmology at a Mount Wilson Observatory. This is the story of his forty-year career developing our understanding of stellar and universal evolution and building the analytical basis for the work of such notables as Merrill, Adams, Joy, Seares, Zwicky and of course, Hubble.§§Through the first six decades of the 20th century, no one had a greater romance with Mount Wilson than Milton Humason. He arrived in Colorado in the summer of 1903 for summer camp at the age of 14. After a short time working as a ranch hand in La Verne, he took the position of a janitor at the Mount Wilson Observatory. From that job came the volunteer opportunity of a night assistant. He quickly became a favorite of the director, George Ellery Hale, who made him a Mount Wilson staff member. For Humason, who did not have a PhD or even a high school diploma, this was the break of his lifetime. During his time at the observatory, he made many observational discoveries and obtained photographs and tricky spectrograms of faint galaxies. His work had a major impact in the field, which included assisting in the formulation of Hubble's Law.§§Humason's saga is the tale of one of the most dynamic characters in science in the first half of the 20th century. It is the tale of how an uneducated, streetwise, moon shining, roguish, humble and thoroughly down to Earth cowboy turned orange rancher named Milton Humason rose by sheer chance, innate ability and incredible will to become the leading deep space observer of his day; one who saw farther in to the universe than anyone before him. A renaissance man for the ages, Humason's story remind us that passion and pursuit may find us at any moment.§