I started out, as most astronomers do, with a university job. But in my generation, women weren’t very welcome at universities, and so I found a job in the government. And the government was appreciably more welcoming. Nancy Roman Read Quote
One of the primary ways that astronomers study stars is to spread their light out into a rainbow, which we call a spectrum, and from that rainbow, we can learn something about what the stars are composed of and how hot they are, how bright they are, and how they’re moving, at least how they’re moving toward or away from us. Nancy Roman Read Quote
All of the stars rotate, have orbits around the center of the galaxy, and most of them go around the center of the galaxy in nearly circular orbits. They vary a little bit from circular, but they’re predominantly circular. Nancy Roman Read Quote
I was scheduled to graduate from high school in 1943, but I was in a course that was supposed to give us four years of high school plus a year of college in our four years. So by the end of my junior year, I would have had enough credits to graduate from high school. Nancy Roman Read Quote
Just as the lunar landings inspired many young people to consider careers in space and related fields, the solution of the challenging instrumentation problems presented in space science can inspire young people to push beyond the current state of the art. Nancy Roman Read Quote
The exciting results from the Hubble, other satellites and probes would not have been possible without innovative solutions to many technical problems. Nancy Roman Read Quote
I wondered had I really oversold the Hubble. I have to admit that, since, I have been convinced that I didn’t. Nancy Roman Read Quote
You cannot exploit the advantages of getting above the atmosphere unless you are able to get up there reasonably large-sized telescopes and unless you are able to keep these telescopes pointing at one region of the sky for long periods of time to a high degree of accuracy. Nancy Roman Read Quote
I had never used the prefix ‘Dr.’ with my name, but when I started with NASA, I had to. Otherwise, I could not get past the secretaries. Nancy Roman Read Quote
