
Nancy Grace Roman, 'Mother of Hubble' Space Telescope, Has Died - DoreenMichele
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/30/680994535/nancy-grace-roman-mother-of-hubble-space-telescope-has-died
======
pgrote
As like most people, I go to wikipedia to learn more about things I am
ignorant of. Never heard of Nancy Grace Roman, so I was interested to learn
more about her exciting life. Her wikipedia entry is a good read, so I popped
over the the Hubble Telescope entry. There is no mention of her on the page.

One of her papers is listed as a source in the entry, but isn't available
online. For someone known as the Mother of Hubble the lack of mention on the
Hubble Telescope page is confusing.

~~~
DoreenMichele
NASA is a government entity. Government employees -- civil servants who aren't
elected officials -- tend to keep a low public profile.

"Loose lips sink ships." When you have access to government secrets, it's not
in the government's best interest, nor in your best interest, to loudly
advertise your role. Among other things, doing things not in the government's
best interest is an excellent way to end up fired.

For such jobs, you want the government and your colleagues to respect you,
take you seriously and promote you, etc. If you want fame and public
recognition, being a civil servant isn't the best career choice. If you want
to accomplish things and mostly be left alone by the prying eyes of the world,
it can be an excellent career choice.

My sister is a high ranking civil servant at a major federal organization.
Most of her career has involved working for the government. She's testified
before Congress on, I think, at least two occasions that I know of. Most
people have no idea who she is. She seems to have little to no internet
presence.

When I worked at Aflac, high ranking people, like department heads, also
seemed to keep a pretty low profile. The world knew who the CEO was, but the
three highest ranked people in my department appeared to have a LinkedIn
account and I recall being unable to readily find any further public records
online in their names -- other than a Twitter account where the department
head posted mostly lightweight comments about his favorite sports team while
not calling attention to the power he wielded at this Fortune 500 company.

I have at times tried to search for info from "big names" I know of via Hacker
News. In some cases, I can find little or nothing about them online.

The cult of personality that gets so much attention is not actually as
important as it appears to be. Private trust from influential people matters
vastly more for opening doors and getting things done.

~~~
ghaff
In general, there's a huge gap between who is influential in the day-to-day
working of industry (even the tech industry) and public profiles. I can pretty
much guarantee you that many senior executives of F500 corporations don't have
Wikipedia articles. I could even point to founders of major US companies and
people who figured prominently in popular books, especially from the pre-Web
era, who don't have articles or who have pretty much a stub. Yet there are any
number of articles about pop culture ephemera or someone who caught the
attention of tech industry fandom at some point.

------
justin66
At one time she had what I believe is the coolest title I've heard associated
with NASA, _Chief of Astronomy and Relativity._

------
stochastic_monk
It's been a year of grieving for astrophysics pioneers. First, Stephen Hawking
this summer, then Riccardo Giacconi [0] just weeks ago, and now Nancy Roman.
(Giacconi directed the Hubble's "earth base" Space Telescope Science Institute
for 12 years.)

It's hard to overstate the importance of the Hubble. It empowered physicists
to prove that the universe is not only expanding but accelerating in its
expansion (commemorated in the 2011 Nobel Prize). Its beautiful images also
captured the popular imagination of people, inspiring myself and others to
pursue scientific careers.

To those wondering why she deserves credit, from the NYTimes writeup [1]:

'''

It was Nancy in the old days before the internet and before Google and email
and all that stuff who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope,
organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it, “
Edward J. Weiler, Dr. Roman’s successor as chief scientist for the Hubble,
told the Voice of America in 2011.

[...]

In addition to coordinating the efforts of astronomers and engineers in their
development of the Hubble, Dr. Roman wrote testimony for NASA representatives
making the case for the Hubble before Congress and she pitched the project to
the Bureau of the Budget.

[...]

Dr. Roman also took part in development of the Cosmic Background Explorer, a
satellite launched in 1989 that confirmed the Big Bang theory of the
universe’s creation.

[...]

She later joined the United States Naval Research Laboratory, specializing in
radio astronomy, and was recruited by NASA in 1959, a year after it was
founded.

[...]

"The idea of coming in with an absolute clean slate to set up a program that I
thought was likely to influence astronomy for 50 years was just a challenge
that I couldn’t turn down,” she recalled in her National Air and Space Museum
interview.

[...]

Dr. Roman retired from NASA in 1979 but continued as a consultant as work
progressed toward the Hubble’s launching.

'''

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/science/riccardo-
giacconi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/science/riccardo-giacconi-
dead.html)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/obituaries/nancy-roman-
di...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/obituaries/nancy-roman-dies-
at-93.html)

~~~
trothamel
> It's hard to overstate the importance of the Hubble. It empowered physicists
> to prove that the universe is not only expanding but accelerating in its
> expansion (commemorated in the 2011 Nobel Prize). Its beautiful images also
> captured the popular imagination of people, inspiring myself and others to
> pursue scientific careers.

It's doubly important to realize that for the first few years, Hubble was
deemed a failure. It was mocked in the newspapers and by late night comedians
- but it was fixed, the program was recovered, and now it's hard to think of a
world without it. (Even though that world will be here soon.)

