Nancy G. Roman

Nancy Roman
Nancy Roman in 2015
Born	(1925-05-16) May 16, 1925 (age 92) Nashville, Tennessee
Residence	Washington, D.C.
Nationality	American
Fields	Astronomy
Institutions	Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago, NASA, Naval Research Laboratory
Alma mater	Swarthmore College, University of Chicago
Known for	Planning of the Hubble Space Telescope

Nancy Grace Roman (born May 16, 1925) 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. Throughout her career, Roman has also been an active public speaker and educator, and an advocate for women in the sciences.

Roman was born in Nashville, Tennessee to music teacher Georgia Smith Roman and geophysicist Irwin Roman. Because of her father’s work, the family relocated to Oklahoma soon after Roman's birth. Roman and her parents moved to Houston, New Jersey, and to Michigan and Nevada later on. After 1955, she lived in Washington, DC. Roman considered her parents to be major influences in her interest in science. Outside of her work Roman enjoyed going to lectures and concerts and was active in the American Association of University Women.

When Roman was eleven years old she showed interest in astronomy by forming an astronomy club among her classmates in Nevada. She and her classmates got together and learned about constellations from books once a week. Although discouraged by those around her, Roman knew by the time she was in high school that she wanted to pursue her passion for astronomy. She attended Western High School in Baltimore where she participated in an accelerated program and graduated in three years.

Roman attended Swarthmore College in 1946 where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Astronomy. While she studied there, she worked at the Sproul Observatory. After this she went on to receive her PhD in the same field at the University of Chicago in 1949. She stayed at the university for six more years working at the Yerkes Observatory, sometimes traveling to the McDonald Observatory in Texas to work as a research associate with W.W. Morgan. The research position was not permanent so Roman became an instructor and later an assistant professor. Roman eventually left her job at the university because of the difficulty for a woman at the time to receive tenure for a research position. Roman continued to be involved with her alma maters as she worked on the Board of Managers for Swarthmore College from 1980 to 1988.