Nancy Roman obituary

Nasa's first chief of astronomy who oversaw the early development of the Hubble space telescope

Nancy Roman, who has died aged 93, was Nasa's first chief of astronomy. She was the first woman to hold an executive position at America's space agency and had direct oversight of the planning and early development of what became the Hubble space telescope. This led Nasa to call her "mother of Hubble".

Joining Nasa in 1959, just six months after the agency opened, Roman was in charge of developing a programme of astronomy from space. She travelled the US talking to astronomers in their various universities and listening to their ambitions. She also discussed with them the advantages of observing from space, where there was no atmosphere to blur the view and no daytime to halt the observatory's work for half the day.

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