One of the reasons I like working with schools is to try to convince women that they can be scientists and that science can be fun.
Nancy Roman
You cannot exploit the advantages of getting above the atmosphere unless you are able to get up there reasonably large-sized telescopes and unless you are able to keep these telescopes pointing at one region of the sky for long periods of time to a high degree of accuracy.
I started out, as most astronomers do, with a university job. But in my generation, women weren't very welcome at universities, and so I found a job in the government. And the government was appreciably more welcoming.
I was born in Nashville, Tenn., but I have lived in a number of places. In 1937, I moved to Baltimore, Md., where I attended junior high and high school. I lived there for five years before leaving for college.
Certainly by the time I was in seventh grade, I knew I had to have a long education if I wanted to become an astronomer, but I figured I'd try it, and if I didn't get far enough, I could always end up teaching in high school or math or physics.
One of the primary ways that astronomers study stars is to spread their light out into a rainbow, which we call a spectrum, and from that rainbow, we can learn something about what the stars are composed of and how hot they are, how bright they are, and how they're moving, at least how they're moving toward or away from us.
Most kids at 10 or 11 love science, but I never outgrew it.
In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin. She looked down her nose at me and sneered, 'What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?'
I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn't get tenure at a research university.
Looking through the atmosphere is somewhat like looking through a piece of old, stained glass. The glass has defects in it, so the image is blurred from that.
I was scheduled to graduate from high school in 1943, but I was in a course that was supposed to give us four years of high school plus a year of college in our four years. So by the end of my junior year, I would have had enough credits to graduate from high school.
I believe that there will be women astronauts sometime just as there are women airplane pilots.
My career was quite unusual, so my main advice to someone interested in a career similar to my own is to remain open to change and new opportunities. I like to tell students that the jobs I took after my Ph.D. were not in existence only a few years before.
It was probably my parents who inspired me most. My father was a scientist and answered my scientific questions, while my mother took me on walks and showed me birds and plants. She also took me out at night and showed me the constellations and the aurora.
All of the stars rotate, have orbits around the center of the galaxy, and most of them go around the center of the galaxy in nearly circular orbits. They vary a little bit from circular, but they're predominantly circular.
I had never used the prefix 'Dr.' with my name, but when I started with NASA, I had to. Otherwise, I could not get past the secretaries.
At Swarthmore, the Dean of Women was very opposed to women going into science or engineering - so opposed that if she couldn't talk a girl out of it, she just never had anything more to do with her for the four years she was there.
I wondered had I really oversold the Hubble. I have to admit that, since, I have been convinced that I didn't.
I do not remember exactly when I became interested in astronomy, but I know it was at a very young age. I did organize an astronomy club for my friends at the age of 11. We would meet once a week to learn about the constellations.
A few months after NASA was formed, I was asked if I knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy.
The first year I was at NASA, I was only responsible for optical and ultraviolet astronomy. Frankly, there wasn't much else.
We live in a technical society.
Many societal problems concern science, such as the energy crisis, genetic alterations of foods.
The exciting results from the Hubble, other satellites and probes would not have been possible without innovative solutions to many technical problems.
Just as the lunar landings inspired many young people to consider careers in space and related fields, the solution of the challenging instrumentation problems presented in space science can inspire young people to push beyond the current state of the art.
