About Nancy Roman
Nancy Grace Roman (May 16, 1925 – December 25, 2018) was an American astronomer who made important contributions to stellar classification and stellar motions. The first female executive at NASA, Roman served as NASA's first Chief of Astronomy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, establishing her as one of the "visionary founders of the US civilian space program". Roman created NASA's space astronomy program and is known to many as the "Mother of Hubble" for her foundational role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. Throughout her career, Roman was an active public speaker and educator, and an advocate for women in the sciences. In May 2020, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope would be named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in recognition of her enduring contributions to astronomy. == Early life == Nancy Grace Roman was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to music teacher Georgia Frances Smith Roman and physicist/mathematician Irwin Roman. Her father took a job as a geophysicist for an oil company and the family moved to Oklahoma three months after Roman's birth. Roman and her parents later moved to Texas, New Jersey, Michigan, and then Nevada in 1936, when her father joined the Civil Service in geophysical research. When she was about 12 years old, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, when Irwin Roman was hired as Senior Geophysicist at the Baltimore office of the U.S. Geological Survey. Roman considered her parents to be major influences in her interest in science.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.