Nancy Roman
Nasa astronomer and ‘mother’ of the Hubble space telescope
NANCY ROMAN, who has died aged 93, was the first woman to hold an executive position at Nasa; as the space agency’s chief of astronomy for almost two decades, she was responsible for developing and promoting the technology that made deep space observation possible.
The best known legacy of her time with Nasa was the Hubble telescope, which launched in April 1990 and remains in operation to this day. The idea of an observatory that would orbit the Earth, beaming back images unobstructed by the absorbing layers of the planet’s atmosphere, had been proposed as far back as 1946. But it took years of lobbying and research by Nancy Roman and her colleagues to convince politicians and fellow astronomers that the project could get off the ground. As overall costs ballooned to $1.5 billion, senators demanded to know why the US taxpayer should be happy to see funding continue. Nancy Roman pointed out that the cost per person for decades of groundbreaking discoveries was equivalent to “a single night at the movies”.
Even after her retirement from Nasa in 1979, she continued to work as a consultant for contractors that supported the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland – the Hubble telescope’s operational “nerve centre”. In 1994 Nasa’s chief scientist Edward Weiler paid tribute to Nancy Roman as the “mother” of Hubble.
Nancy Grace Roman was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 16 1925. Her father Irwin was a geophysicist, her mother Georgia a pianist and music teacher. Although not scientifically minded herself, Georgia encouraged her daughter’s early interest in the stars, taking her to watch the Northern Lights from their home, now in Michigan.
Later they moved to Baltimore and Nancy founded an astronomy club for fellow school pupils – though support from teachers was lukewarm. A guidance counsellor poured cold water on her plans to study algebra for two years running, asking: “What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?”
Later, at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, a professor told her that he usually tried to dissuade girls from majoring in Physics, “but I think maybe you might make it”. After graduating with a BA in astronomy she studied for her PHD at the University of Chicago, staying on as an assistant professor. While there she studied stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, observing how their compositions varied and that these variations correlated with differences in the stars’ velocities and directions.
Her work helped to lay the foundations for understanding the structure of the Milky Way – but a lack of funding made it hard for her to progress further. Having resigned herself to the idea that she would never be offered a tenured position, she moved to the US Naval Research Laboratory. There she worked in radio astronomy, using radar to calculate the Earth’s distance from the Moon, before being recruited by a fledgling Nasa. From 1961 to 1963 she was chief of astronomy and solar physics, followed by 14 years as chief of astronomy and relativity programmes. Her remit included launching and overseeing three orbiting solar observatories, three astronomical satellites and four geodetic satellites (which measure the dimensions of the Earth).
She also took part in the development of the Cosmic Background Explorer, a satellite which launched in 1989 and spent four years mapping the cosmic microwave background radiation of the Universe, giving evidence to support the “Big Bang” theory.
Nancy Roman’s work was recognised by Nasa in 1969 with its Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award. In 2017 she was rendered in plastic by Lego, as part of its “Women of Nasa” set.
Nancy Roman, born May 16 1925, died December 26 2018