30 ASTRONOMY • APRIL 2021
to Cornell University, where he
worked toward his Ph.D. while
she pursued a master’s degree.
After two years of study,
Rubin’s final thesis on the velocity
distribution of galaxies was so
impressive that her department
chair, William Shaw, offered to
present it at an upcoming annual
astronomy conference. But that
offer came with one major condi-
tion. Rubin, pregnant with her
first child and due shortly before
the conference, couldn’t possibly
go, he said. So, Shaw would pres-
ent the research under his name,
not hers. She declined his “offer”
and instead attended herself. The
morning after her presentation,
The Washington Post front page
bore the headline “Young Mother
Finds Center of Creation.”
In 1951, the Rubins left
Cornell for Washington, D.C.,
where Robert took a position at
the Johns Hopkins Applied
Physics Laboratory (APL). Within
a year, it was clear that his wife
desperately missed her research,
so Robert encouraged her to
pursue a Ph.D. at Georgetown
University. While pregnant with
their second child, Rubin was
soon rubbing shoulders with
prominent scientists again. After
long days at APL, Robert would
drive her to Georgetown for eve-
ning classes. He would then parkoutside and wait, eating his sup-
per in their car.
Roman, meanwhile, gradu-
ated from Swarthmore in 1946
and went to the University of
Chicago to earn a Ph.D. When
she first met the professor who
would become her thesis advisor,
William Morgan, he told her to
go to his house to change the bed
since his wife was sick. Stunned,
she complied. Roman soon dis-
covered that most of the profes-
sors considered educating
women a waste of time, since
they were all destined to marry
and become homemakers.
Morgan rarely met with her
and went six months without
acknowledging the simplestgreeting, Roman wrote. He was
willing, on the other hand, to
abscond with her research and
present it as his own at a presti-
gious Vatican conference. On the
night before her final oral exam,
Morgan agreed to meet, but sched-
uled their session at midnight. “He
decided to use it as an occasion for
petting,” she wrote. “I moved his
hand several times, trying to go
on with our conversation.”
After earning her Ph.D. in
1949, Roman stayed on at Yerkes
Observatory another six years as
a researcher and instructor, but
with much lower pay than her
male colleagues. The department
chairman, Nobel laureate
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,
explained to her: “We don’t dis-
criminate against women — we
can just get them for less.”Opening new frontiers
Despite these ongoing hardships,
Rubin and Roman pressed on.
They began to make names for
themselves and, as it turned out,
for two future telescopes.
After earning her Ph.D. in
1954, Rubin went on to become
Georgetown faculty. She later
moved to the Carnegie
Institution in Washington, diving
into research on galaxies that ledABOVE: Rubin uses
a blackboard to
illustrate a point
during the May 1971
Mayall Symposium.
AIP EMILIO SEGRÈ VISUAL
ARCHIVES, DOROTHY CRAWFORD
COLLECTION
LOWER RIGHT: This
composite photo and
computer rendering
shows the final Vera
C. Rubin Observatory
building, previously
known as the Large
Synoptic Survey
Telescope, or L SST.
In December 2020,
the observatory
unveiled its official
logo (upper right).
Its colors and
design reflect the
observatory’s
physical appearance
and scientific mission.
RUBIN OBSERVATORY/NSF/AURA;
RUBIN OBSERVTORY