When Nancy Grace Roman was 11 years old, her family was living in Reno, Nevada. Nancy Roman, who died Wednesday at age 93, was NASA’s first chief of astronomy and the first woman in a leadership position at the space agency. Roman oversaw the early planning for the Hubble Space Telescope, which began orbiting Earth above its atmosphere in April 1990 to capture an unobstructed view of the universe. Placed into orbit from a manned Discovery shuttle and named for pioneering American astronomer Edwin Hubble, it became the first large optical telescope in space. Roman was born on May 16, 1925, in Nashville, Tennessee, the only child of Irwin Roman, a geophysicist, and Georgia (Smith) Roman, a music teacher.

Source: thestar December 30, 2018 22:07 UTC