This is the story of the astronomer Milton La Salle Humason whose career was integral to
developing our understanding of stellar and universal evolution and who helped to build the
analytical basis for the work of such notable astronomers and astrophysicists as Paul Merrill
Walter Adams Alfred Joy Frederick Seares Fritz Zwicky Walter Baade and Edwin Hubble.
Humason's unlikely story began on the shores of the Mississippi River in Winona Minnesota in
1891 and led to the foot of Mount Wilson outside Los Angeles California twelve years later.
It is there where he first attended summer camp in 1903 and was captivated by its surroundings.
The mountain would become the backdrop for his life and career over the next six decades as he
helped first build George Ellery Hale's observatory on the summit and then rose to become one
of that institution's leading figures through the first half of the twentieth century. The
story chronicles Humason's life on Mount Wilson from his first trip to the mountain to his
days as a muleskinner leading teams of mules hauling supplies to the summit during the
construction of the observatory and follows him through his extraordinary career in
spectroscopy working beside Edwin Hubble as the two helped to reconstruct our concept of the
universe. A patient knowledgeable and persistent observer Humason was later awarded an
honorary doctorate for his work despite having no formal education beyond the eighth grade.
His skill at the telescope is legendary. During his career he photographed the spectra of stars
galaxies and other objects many thousands of times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye
and pushed the boundary of the known universe deeper into space than any before him. His work
which included assisting in the formulation of Hubble's Law of redshifts helped to set the
field of cosmology solidly on its foundation. Milton Humason was one of the most charismatic
characters in science during the first half of the 20th century. Uneducated streetwise
moonshining roguish humble and thoroughly down to earth he rose by sheer chance innate
ability and incredible will to become the leading deep space observer of his day. The
Renaissance man of Mount Wilson as Harlow Shapley once referred to him Humason's
extraordinary life reminds us that passion and purpose may find us at any moment.
