Happy Birthday, Nancy Grace Roman!!!
Happy Birthday, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman!!!
One of the most influential “Makers” at a time before Makerspaces were in vogue, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman is an American astronomer who was one of the first female executives at NASA. She is known to many as the “Mother of Hubble” for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. Wikipedia
Denied tenure as a female, she left academia and continued on as Chief of Astronomy was the U.S. Space agency. Dr. Roman, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, pioneered research on the Hubble Telescope.
During the years when budget cuts threatened the research, Dr. Roman was able to conceptualize both the need and the desire of deep space research. She famously said, “For the cost of the night at the movies, every American would have 15 years of exciting discovery.”
Dr. Nancy Grace Roman was correct and since the Hubble’s launch in 1990, we have seen enchanting and amazing images of our expansive celestial neighborhood. Among the many, many discoveries from the Hubble telescope, is the discovery that the number of galaxies in the universe is two with 22 zeroes after it.
The Trifid Nebula, as seen by data from the Hubble Telescope
Read more about Nancy Grace Roman at NASA’s Oral History and this link from Voice of America
Be sure to check out additional pictures from the Astronomy Picture of the Day catalog.
