How do you think the dark matter problem is solved?” Vera C. Rubin urgently asked me, within minutes of being introduced at a 2009 Women in Astronomy conference. To this day, I can’t remember what I said in response. I was awestruck: the famed astronomer who had won the National Medal of Science for her work finding the first conclusive evidence for dark matter’s existence was asking me, a twentysomething Ph.D. student, for my opinion. I am certain that whatever I came up with was not very good because it was a problem that I had, until that moment, given no serious thought to. Until Rubin asked me my opinion, it had never occurred to me that I was entitled to have an opinion on the question at all.
If I disappointed her with my answer, she didn’t show it. Instead she asked me to sit down to lunch with her and some other women astronomers, including former NASA administrator Nancy Grace Roman. Rubin then proceeded to fangirl over Roman, who is often referred to as “the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” It was quite a moment for me, to watch an elderly woman who had uncovered one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time excitedly introduce us to her own hero.
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