12/27/2023 0 Comments Huble telescope for kidsBut when NASA came along and offered me a job I decided to take it.Ī few months after NASA was formed, I was asked if I knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy. I enjoyed the work, so I wasn't looking terribly actively for a new job. I did not want to start over as an engineer - I wanted to stay in astronomy. I was right about that, but I was too early, because at that time radio astronomers in this country were expected to build their own instruments. I decided that it had a lot of possibilities for galactic structure, which is what I was interested in at that time - the structure of the Milky Way. Naval Research Laboratory working in radio astronomy - which was new in this country at that time. I heard about a job in Washington at the U.S. I didn't think I could stay in the academic community. I like teaching very much, but I didn't want to do just teaching. I didn't think I could get tenure as a research astronomer, and I didn't want to stay in research. How did you end up working in the space program? I wanted to learn more about science generally. And I'm curious in more than just science, to be sure, but astronomy in particular was a subject I wanted to learn more about. I think I've always been curious, and I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity. I knew it was going to take me another 12 years of schooling, but I figured I'd try and if I didn't make it, I could teach physics or math in high school. And by seventh grade I’d decided I wanted to be an astronomer, and I was going to try for it. Between fifth and sixth grades, I organized my friends into an astronomy club to study the constellations. She said, “Well, I also took you out and showed you the birds and the trees and the flowers.” And I remember that - I remember her taking me out on long walks and showing me things, but they didn't stick - the astronomy did. I told her this a little while before she died, and she was shocked. I blamed my mother because she used to take me out and show me the constellations and the Northern Lights, things like that. I’ve been interested in it as long as I can remember. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center What first sparked your interest in space and science? After 1955, I lived in the Washington, DC, area. I lived there for five years before leaving for college (it was my longest home before college). In 1937, I moved to Baltimore, where I attended junior high and high school. I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but I lived in a number of places. A decade later, she started working at NASA, where she became the first chief of astronomy in the Office of Space Science, and the first woman to hold an executive position at the space agency. Roman received her doctorate in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. The woman who would become known as "the mother of Hubble” said she had decided by seventh grade to become an astronomer. It was those stars in the night sky that grabbed Nancy’s attention. Her mother also pointed out constellations. As a child, Nancy Roman’s mother took her on walks to show her flowers, birds and trees.
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