Nancy Grace Roman, 'Mother of Hubble,' Dies at 93
Source: Space.com
Nancy Grace Roman, 'Mother of Hubble,' Dies at 93
By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | December 29, 2018 08:12am ET
Nancy Grace Roman, a renowned astronomer who led the drive to launch the Hubble Space Telescope, died on Dec. 25 at the age of 93, according to the Associated Press.
Roman was nicknamed "the mother of Hubble" for her work on the pioneering telescope, which launched in 1990. She joined NASA's headquarters office soon after the agency's founding in 1958. She was the first chief of astronomy, drawn to the offer of having the leeway to create such a pivotal department from scratch.
A previous astronomer, Lyman Spitzer, proposed exploring the idea of a space-based optical telescope in 1946, but the budget and technology required for such a project wasn't available. Roman began leading talks around the idea in 1960, three decades before the instrument finally flew. She also helped spearhead the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), another orbiting instrument.
"She made it possible to get early telescopes up [into space] to learn what needed to be learned," science historian Bob Zimmerman told Space.com in 2009. "As soon as that technology started to mature, she was pushing for the design work. Her hard-nosed nature helped get the telescope built."
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Read more: https://www.space.com/42856-nancy-roman-mother-of-hubble-dead.html
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Source: Washington Post
Nancy Grace Roman, astronomer celebrated as ‘mother’ of Hubble, dies at 93
By Emily Langer December 28 at 6:38 PM
When Nancy Grace Roman requested permission to take a second algebra course in high school, a teacher demanded to know “what lady would take mathematics instead of Latin.” In college, a professor remarked that he often tried to dissuade women from majoring in physics. And after receiving a doctorate in astronomy, she concluded that a female professor in the field had little hope of obtaining tenure.
Undeterred by the barriers to women in the sciences, Dr. Roman found a professional home at NASA. Even there, she recalled in an interview years later, she felt compelled to use the honorific “Dr.”
“Otherwise,” she said, “I could not get past the secretaries.”
After joining the fledgling space agency in 1959, Dr. Roman became the first chief of astronomy at NASA headquarters, a role that made her one of the agency’s first female executives. She remained in that position for nearly two decades before her retirement in 1979.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/nancy-grace-roman-astronomer-celebrated-as-mother-of-hubble-dies-at-93/2018/12/28/88f7fe94-0a4c-11e9-88e3-989a3e456820_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Better to have posted as response to Judy Lynn's post https://www.democraticunderground.com/122861453
Dupes are not actually against the rules, but they do lead to clutter and confusion, so please give earlier posts a quick scan first. Dupes in LBN are removed, but in Science I just leave "constructive criticism". 
(Oh, and everybody does one accidentally now and then, including me.)