For which physicist was Hubble a student laboratory assistant?

Edwin Hubble was a student laboratory assistant for physicist Robert Millikan.

The position came during Hubble’s University of Chicago years, when his studies centered on mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. He worked as Millikan’s laboratory assistant for a year, gaining experience in experimental physics before his career turned decisively toward astronomy.

Robert Millikan was already a major figure in physics and later won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics for measuring the elementary electric charge and for work on the photoelectric effect. His laboratory gave Hubble contact with modern scientific research at a formative stage.

Hubble eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in 1910, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and completed a doctorate at the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory in 1921. The connection is sometimes overshadowed by Hubble’s later observational work, but it shows that his scientific training was broader than astronomy alone.