5 ms·

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 he

by pgrote 8y ago

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.

rundigen12 8y ago
Agreed. Is this an example of the patriarchal bias of science leaving women out of the telling of history -- finally being set straight by our friends at NPR -- or leftist revisionism trying to ascribe extremely inordinate influence to one member of a large team just because she happened to be female? If one is assigning parentage, would Lyman Spitzer be the "father" of the Hubble telescope? Perhaps it had many "fathers" but only one "mother"? EDIT: MichaelMoser123's added info and quotes are helpful. Merits updating the Wikipedia page to give her greater(/any) credit.
- cheez 8y ago
  According to the article, she advocated for space-based astronomy.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
Her page says quite a lot about her role in the program, and it's all backed by citations. The article mentions the difficulty of documenting a program that runs over decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman "The last program in which set up the committee and with which she was highly involved was the Hubble Telescope. Roman was very involved with the early planning and specifically the setting up of the program's structure. Because of her contribution, she is often called the “Mother of Hubble."[13] NASA’s current chief astronomer, who worked with Roman at the agency, calls her “the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” “Which is often forgotten by our younger generation of astronomers who make their careers by using Hubble Space Telescope," says Ed Weiler. "Regretfully, history has forgotten a lot in today’s Internet age, but it was Nancy in the old days before the Internet and before Google and e-mail and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it.” [8]"
ghaff 8y ago
TBF, there is very little mention of individual names at all in the Hubble Wikipedia article (nor on NASA's Hubble site other than a few astronomy and rocketry pioneers). I suspect that with most large team projects, it's probably a doomed effort to fairly allocate credit.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.

by pgrote 8y ago

rundigen12 8y ago

Agreed. Is this an example of the patriarchal bias of science leaving women out of the telling of history -- finally being set straight by our friends at NPR -- or leftist revisionism trying to ascribe extremely inordinate influence to one member of a large team just because she happened to be female? If one is assigning parentage, would Lyman Spitzer be the "father" of the Hubble telescope? Perhaps it had many "fathers" but only one "mother"? EDIT: MichaelMoser123's added info and quotes are helpful. Merits updating the Wikipedia page to give her greater(/any) credit.

cheez 8y ago
According to the article, she advocated for space-based astronomy.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

Her page says quite a lot about her role in the program, and it's all backed by citations. The article mentions the difficulty of documenting a program that runs over decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman "The last program in which set up the committee and with which she was highly involved was the Hubble Telescope. Roman was very involved with the early planning and specifically the setting up of the program's structure. Because of her contribution, she is often called the “Mother of Hubble."[13] NASA’s current chief astronomer, who worked with Roman at the agency, calls her “the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” “Which is often forgotten by our younger generation of astronomers who make their careers by using Hubble Space Telescope," says Ed Weiler. "Regretfully, history has forgotten a lot in today’s Internet age, but it was Nancy in the old days before the Internet and before Google and e-mail and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it.” [8]"

ghaff 8y ago

TBF, there is very little mention of individual names at all in the Hubble Wikipedia article (nor on NASA's Hubble site other than a few astronomy and rocketry pioneers). I suspect that with most large team projects, it's probably a doomed effort to fairly allocate credit.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.