International Women Space
Vera Rubin's insight on particle physics and how it shaped—and was shaped—by galactic forces helped spawn the discovery of dark matter. Yet the female pioneer, who launched her career in California's Palomar Observatory in the 1960s, never received a call from the Nobel Prize committee. In January, the National Science Foundation named a newly constructed telescope in Chile in her honor. (Smithsonian Institution/)Katherine Johnson fought her way through the rancor of school integration in West Virginia to graduate with a college degree mathematics. After teaching in public school for a few years, she moved to Virginia with her family to join an all-black computing squad in a pre-NASA lab. As the U.S.-Soviet space race kicked up, Johnson contributed flight targets and other data for Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, as well as the International Space Station and multiple satellite programs. She won the Presidential Medal of Honor in 2015....