Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Nancy Roman says she can’t recall a time when she was not determined to be an astronomer and to learn everything she could about stars. Her father, Irwin, was a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist who encouraged her interest in science. Many of her friends and teachers tried to discourage Nancy from studying astronomy, telling her it was not a field for women. But she persisted, and read every astronomy book she could find in school and city libraries. “I am glad I was stubborn,” she says now. “I have had a wonderful career.”

After high school, Nancy studied astronomy at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she worked at the Sproul Observatory. She studied for her PhD in astronomy at the University of Chicago and worked at the Yerkes Observatory, earning her degree in 1949. Roman did research at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas also. “In those days, we could get substantial telescope time, and I often spent as much as four months a year at [McDonald],” she said in an interview. “I enjoyed both research and teaching, but forty years ago it was nearly impossible for a woman to get tenure in an astronomy research department. Therefore, I left the university to join the radio astronomy branch at the Naval Research Laboratory.”

http://www.womenastronomers.com/roman.htm

How did you end up working in the space program?
A few months after NASA was formed I was asked if I knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy. I knew that taking on this responsibility would mean that I could no longer do research, but the challenge of formulating a program from scratch that I believed would influence astronomy for decades to come was too great to resist.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/profile.cfm?Code=RomanN