She also co-wrote several books for children. She helped found the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, based in Alexandria, and in 2001 launched Sally Ride Science, an educational company. Ride devoted herself to bringing the excitement of science to children - especially girls. The Washington Post reports:Īfter her space career, Ms. It's too bad our society isn't further along." These experiences may have motivated Ride's later commitment to developing STEM education, with a focus on educating girls. The New York Times' obituary reports her response at a NASA news conference: "It's too bad this is such a big deal. Ride was clearly disappointed in the media focus on her sex. Ride - chosen in part because she was known for keeping her cool under stress - politely endured a barrage of questions focused on her sex: Would spaceflight affect her reproductive organs? Did she plan to have children? Would she wear a bra or makeup in space? Did she cry on the job? How would she deal with menstruation in space? Speaking to reporters before the first shuttle flight, Dr. The New York Times highlighted some of these challenges in its obituary: And really I can't say that about too many other people."Īs the first American woman to fly in space, Ride faced some unique challenges. It was a type of charisma she was just nice to be with. She was extremely intelligent-but she had something besides that. "She was a very good physicist on top of everything else, a very, very unique person. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., co-authored a number of papers with Ride. Phillip Sprangle, a physicist at the U.S. Many of Ride's other papers focused on laser physics (for examples, see here, here, and here.) Her scientific colleagues remember her fondly. Written as the Cold War was winding down, Ride and her co-authors proposed a method to verify the presence of nuclear-armed missiles on ships and submarines. ![]() Her first article to appear in Science also debuted the same year. She received her doctorate in physics from Stanford University in 1978, and once her career as an astronaut ended, she became a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute in 1989. Ride is best known for her extraterrestrial exploits, but she was also a scientist. ![]() Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, died on Monday of pancreatic cancer.
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