George Ellery Hale

George Ellery Hale persuaded wealthy donors to fund a series of ever larger telescopes: Yerkes Observatory in 1897 with Charles Yerkes's money, Mount Wilson Observatory from 1904 with the Carnegie Institution, and the 200-inch Palomar telescope, finished after his death. He also helped turn a small Pasadena college into Caltech. Edwin Hubble's discoveries of other galaxies and cosmic expansion came from Hale's Mount Wilson.