The scientist faced discrimination in a male-dominated field and was one of the architects of the era of space observatories in Astronomy
By Ian Whittaker
NASA named its newest space telescope in honor of American scientist Nancy Grace Roman. Roman's contributions to astrophysics should have made her famous, but many people have probably never heard of her.
For decades, astronomers have been treated to stunning data and images from the Hubble Space Telescope, launched into Earth's orbit in 1990. In 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was sent into space as Hubble's successor. Since then, JWST has identified some of the first stars and galaxies to form after the Big Bang and made a number of other surprising discoveries.
JWST was designed to observe individual objects in extraordinary detail. The Roman telescope, in turn, was designed to survey the sky on a large scale. By monitoring vast areas of the Cosmos, astronomers will be able to piece together a broader picture of how the Universe changes. The capabilities of the two telescopes are therefore complementary.
The new space telescope's name honors a scientist who fought discrimination in a male-dominated field, ultimately becoming NASA's first female chief astronomer.
Roman was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the daughter of a music teacher and a father who was a mathematician and physicist. She graduated with a degree in astronomy from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1946.
She earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago, completing her graduate studies at the university's Yerkes Observatory, where she worked on mapping the movements of stars.
In his early research, Roman compared the way stars moved across the sky with their composition. This led to the discovery that there were different populations of stars within the Milky Way.
Roman also discovered that the amounts of “heavy” chemical elements (in astronomy, those elements heavier than helium) in these stars were linked to the speed and direction with which they were moving away from us.
This allowed the creation of a mathematical model that essentially reversed time to analyze how stars were born from the same nebula. Roman discovered that not all stars in a given area are the same age, which led to observational evidence about how our galaxy is structured.
Roman collected vast quantities of astronomical observations at a time when the process for doing so—based on photographic plates rather than digital cameras—was much more time-consuming than it is today.
To identify the stars, Roman used a method called “excess UV,” which is still used today as a quick way to identify different types of stars.
During his time as a faculty member at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory, Roman was a victim of pay inequality. She once estimated that she earned no more than 60% of what her male colleagues earned. She also felt that she would never be able to become a full professor because of her gender.
In a 2017 interview, Roman said he took his salary concerns to the head of his department at the time, physicist and Nobel Prize winner Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He told her, "We don't discriminate against women. It's just that we can hire them for less pay."
This contributed to Roman moving to a more secure position at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. In this new role, as head of microwave spectroscopy, she used radio waves to increase the accuracy of measuring the distance between the Earth and the Moon. She also mapped large sections of the Milky Way using radio waves.
When NASA was created in 1958, most of the scientific staff were recruited from the Naval Research Laboratory. The leadership of this group consulted Roman about creating an astronomy program at the new agency.
In 1959, she transferred to NASA as head of observational astronomy. His title was changed to head of astronomy after a year. Roman was the first woman to hold any executive position at NASA, at a time when the pay gap between men and women in the US was 60 cents on the dollar and women were subjected to serious discriminatory practices in the workplace — as well as elsewhere.
During this period, Roman was solely responsible for deciding which astronomers' projects would or would not receive funding from NASA. Today, the process is driven by peer review panels, which narrow down the number of applicants through pre-selection rounds.
Roman oversaw the development and launch of some of the first space telescopes. The idea of putting a telescope into orbit had first been suggested by American physicist and astronomer Lyman Spitzer in 1946.
This occurred before the first satellite had even been launched into orbit. Space telescopes have many advantages, including avoiding distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere, allowing observatories to obtain sharper and clearer images.
Roman initially worked on launching several smaller space telescopes that observed the sky in ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. She also helped launch the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, which made it possible to study stars in infrared wavelengths (those slightly longer than visible red light).
These missions served as proof of concept for what were, at the time, cutting-edge observation techniques. They also justified investing larger amounts of money in subsequent missions. Roman worked skillfully to drum up support for the Hubble Space Telescope (initially known as the Great Space Telescope), giving public lectures and mobilizing astronomers.
NASA chief science officer Ed Weiler would later dub Roman the “mother of Hubble” based on these efforts. She remained an enthusiastic advocate for women in science and astronomy in general until her death in 2018.
Roman's choice of name for this new telescope finally recognizes an exceptional astronomer and one of the architects of the era of space observatories. We hope this also helps to publicize his life and achievements.
Ian Whittaker does not consult with, work for, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from the publication of this article and has disclosed no relevant relationships beyond his academic role.
