Nancy Roman, "mother" of the Hubble telescope, dies at the age of 93

Nancy Grace Roman, a former NASA astronomer, died last night on the night of December 25, but the news was only released on Monday. Roman is best known for being one of the leading planners of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has brought some of the greatest discoveries and images of recent astronomy.

The death of the 93-year-old astronomer was confirmed by a cousin, Laura Bates Verreau. The cause of death has not been reported.

Nancy joined NASA in 1959 and became the first astronomy chief of the US space agency. She remained in this position nearly two decades before her retirement in 1979.

During her studies and career, she faced resistance to her interest in a male dominated field. According to the Washington Post, when Nancy asked for permission to take a second high school algebra course, a teacher asked, "Which girl would use math instead of Latin?"

In college, a teacher reiterated that many times tried to dissuade women from specializing in physics. After receiving a doctorate in astronomy, she concluded that a teacher on the field had little hope of regaining stability.

She recalled in an interview that she felt compelled to use the honorary doctor to be respected within NASA. "Otherwise, I could not get through the offices."

Nancy is best known for being responsible for most of Hubble's planning and conceptualization, although the telescope was only launched in 1990, eleven years after Nancy's retirement, due to bureaucracies and difficulties in raising it.

Edward Weiler, Chief Scientist at Hubble in the 1990s, called "Hubble's Mother". "It was Nancy in the pre-Internet era, and before Google, e-mail and everything that really helped sell the Hubble Space Telescope and organized the astronomers, who finally convinced Congress to fund it." explained Weiler.

In 1962, Nancy successfully directed the agency's first astronomical mission: the Solar Observatory in Orbit 1, a device to measure electromagnetic radiation from the sun, among others. He also coordinated the successful launch of geodetic satellites used to measure and map the Earth, as well as several astronomical observatories in orbit that made discoveries in the Earth's atmosphere.