Nancy Grace Roman Born in Tennessee

Why this is here: Despite facing obstacles to tenure as a woman, Roman successfully championed the idea of a long-lived space observatory for over a decade before its approval in 1977.

Nancy Grace Roman entered the world in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 16, 1925. She started an astronomy club at age eleven and later earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Roman joined NASA a few months after its 1959 founding and became its first chief of astronomy in 1961.

She advocated for a space telescope to replace high-altitude balloons and rockets. Roman spent years persuading Congress to fund the project, which gained approval in 1977. She later returned to NASA after caring for her mother, following the telescope’s development.

NASA will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an infrared telescope, as early as fall 2026. It will build on her work by studying dark energy and exoplanets, though many questions about the universe remain open.