Nancy Grace Roman

Hello! My name is Nancy Grace Roman. When I was a little girl, born on May 16th, 1925, my favorite thing to do was look up at the night sky. I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, and my mom would take me outside to show me the moon, the planets, and the beautiful shimmering stars. I was so curious! I wanted to know what they were and how they worked. When I was 11 years old, I even started an astronomy club with my friends. We would read books about the stars and learn the names of all the constellations. Looking at the sky felt like looking at a giant, sparkling mystery that I just had to solve.

When it was time to go to college, I knew exactly what I wanted to study: astronomy! Back then, not many women became scientists. Some of my teachers even told me that science was a subject for boys. But I didn't let that stop me. I knew I was just as curious and just as smart. I loved learning so much that I kept going to school until I became Dr. Nancy Grace Roman in 1949. I worked at a giant observatory, using huge telescopes to look deep into space. I studied how stars moved and what they were made of. It was my dream come true, but my biggest adventure was still to come.

In 1959, I got a very exciting job at a brand-new place called NASA. NASA's job was to explore space! I was one of the very first women to be a leader there. My official title was Chief of Astronomy. That's a fancy way of saying I was in charge of all the projects that studied the stars. It was a big responsibility. Instead of just looking through telescopes from Earth, I got to help plan missions that would send satellites and telescopes up into space. This was important because Earth's wobbly air, called the atmosphere, makes the stars look blurry. A telescope in space could see everything perfectly clearly, like looking through a crystal-clear window.

My biggest and most famous idea at NASA was for a giant telescope that would orbit the Earth. It would be as big as a school bus! I knew that a telescope like this could take pictures of galaxies billions of light-years away. I worked for many years to convince people that this was a good idea and helped plan how it would work. Many years later, that telescope was finally built and launched into space in 1990. It was named the Hubble Space Telescope, and because I worked so hard to make it happen, people started calling me the 'Mother of Hubble.' It makes me very proud.

I lived a long and wonderful life filled with stars, and I was 93 years old when my time on Earth was over. But my work continues to this day. The Hubble Space Telescope is still floating high above the Earth, taking the most amazing pictures of our universe. It has shown us colorful clouds of gas where new stars are born and galaxies so far away they look like tiny jewels. I hope that when you look up at the night sky, you remember to stay curious, just like I did.