"Humason assembled spectra of the nebulae and I attempted to estimate distances." So wrote Hubble of his colleague Milton Humason in 1935 by which time spectra had been obtained for over 150 nebulae. Hubble was a stern warner of using the Doppler effect for galaxies and argued against the recessional velocity interpretation of redshift, convincing Robert Millikan, 1923 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics and director of physics at the California Insitute of Technology, that the redshift interpretation as an expanison of the universe was probably wrong, the year before both of their deaths in 1953.
Hubble ended his book Observational Approach to Cosmology[+] with the statement:..."if the recession factor is dropped, if redshifts are not primarily velocity-shifts, the picure is simple and plausible. There is no evidence of expansion and no restriction of time-scale, no trace of spatial curvature, and no limitation of spatial dimensions. Moreover, there is no problem of internebular material. The observable region is thoroughly homogeneous; it is too small a sample to indicate the nature of the universe at large. The univers might even be an expanding model, provide the rate of expansion, which pure theory does not specify, in inappreciable. For that matter, the universe might even be contracting."
Hubble ended his book Observational Approach to Cosmology[+] with the statement:..."if the recession factor is dropped, if redshifts are not primarily velocity-shifts, the picure is simple and plausible. There is no evidence of expansion and no restriction of time-scale, no trace of spatial curvature, and no limitation of spatial dimensions. Moreover, there is no problem of internebular material. The observable region is thoroughly homogeneous; it is too small a sample to indicate the nature of the universe at large. The univers might even be an expanding model, provide the rate of expansion, which pure theory does not specify, in inappreciable. For that matter, the universe might even be contracting."
[+] https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept04/Hubble/paper.pdf
source: https://plasmauniverse.info/people/contributors.html