A Brief History of Our View of the Universe

Today's cosmological edifice is essentially the product of the 20th century. This account, presented in the Baird Auditorium of the National Museum of Natural History, begins with the Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, then describes some of its historical background (including why cosmology was almost stillborn with the work of Newton), and finally examines why in 1937 Hubble erred by an order of magnitude in establishing the Hubble constant.