NASA Telescope Honors Nancy Grace Roman, Architect of Space-Based Astronomy

Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy. Credit: NASA/ESA

Nancy Grace Roman was born on May 16, 1925, in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up captivated by the night sky. Her mother, Georgia Frances Smith Roman, encouraged this early curiosity, walking with her young daughter to point out constellations and the aurora borealis.

She went on to Swarthmore College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in astronomy in 1946, and then to the University of Chicago, where she completed a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1949.

In 1959, Roman was recruited by the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration to help build its space science program essentially from scratch. She became NASA’s first chief of astronomy and the first woman to hold an executive position at the agency.

The project she nurtured through its most difficult years became the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. Because of her foundational role in conceiving, justifying and organizing the mission decades before it flew, Roman became widely known as the “Mother of Hubble.”

Please use the link below to read more about this brilliant and amazing woman.

(Source: phys.org)