Nancy Grace Roman, U.S. Astronomer (wikipedia.com)

Nancy Grace Roman
American Astronomer
Mother of the Hubble Space Telescope

Nancy Grace Roman gathered classmates and friends when she was 11 years old in Reno, Nevada and formed an astronomy club so they could read about constellations. By the time she was 12 and in 7^th grade in Baltimore, Maryland, she knew she wanted to study astronomy.  Like other women of her era, she was overlooked for tenure and promotions because she was a woman, but she was determined to pursue her love of astronomy.

When Roman was three months old, the family moved to Oklahoma where her father, Irwin Roman, took a job as a geophysicist for an oil company. Other jobs took the family to Texas, New Jersey and Michigan. In 1936 when they moved to Nevada, her father did geophysical research for the Civil Service. The U.S. Geological Survey then hired him as a senior geophysicist, and the family moved to Baltimore.

In her sophomore year at Swarthmore, Roman began working at the Sproul Observatory and analyzed and processed astronomical glass plates and helped restore two student telescopes. At University of Chicago she conducted research on stellar classification and the structure of the Milky Way. She was invited to be a research assistant at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.

NASA hired Roman as chief of astronomy in 1959, the first woman executive at NASA. She created NASA’s space astronomy program and is known to many as the “Mother of Hubble” for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 2017 she was a minifigure in the Women of NASA LEGO set, and in 2020 NASA announced the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope would be named after her. The telescope was launched into space on August 30, 2026.

 Bio

• Born – May 16, 1925 in Nashville, Tennessee
• Parents – Only child of music teacher Georgia Frances Smith Roman and physicist/mathematician Irwin Roman
• 1942  – Graduated in three years from Western High School, Baltimore, Maryland
• 1946  – Bachelor’s degree in astronomy, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
• 1949  – Ph.D. in astronomy from University of Chicago

 Career

• 1949-55 – Yerkes Observatory, McDonald Observatory and University of Chicago; conducted research and taught
• 1955-59 – Conducted radio astronomy research at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
• 1959 – NASA: first woman executive and first chief of astronomy; created the space astronomy program; spearheaded the Hubble Space Telescope; spearheaded the development and launch of multiple Orbiting Astronomical Observatories. Led the planning committees and lobbied Congress to secure funding and approval for Hubble Space Telescope
• 1960-70s – Set up committees to plan space-based telescopes
• 1977 – Secured congressional funding for the project that became the Hubble Space Telescope; Nicknamed “Mother of the Hubble”
• 1979  – Retired to care for her mother while consulting on astronomical catalogs
• 1981 – Part-time director of the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Astronomical Data Center; her mother passed away in 1992
• 1995-97 – Director of Astronomical Data Center
• 1997-2017 – Recorded astronomical audiobooks for the visually impaired
• 1997-2018 – Taught science in junior high and high school

Personal

Roman never married and had children. She died on December 25, 2018, in Germantown, Maryland at the age of 93.

Further information

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope
https://www.popsci.com/science/nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope-launch
https://www.aip.org/library/nancy-grace-roman-and-early-space-telescopes

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Honoring 23 Black Women, Recognizing 23 Notable Mothers, Saluting 23 Faithful Suffragists