Dr. Sally Ride - Inductee

“When I was a girl, I had a teacher who encouraged my interest in science. She challenged me to be curious, to ask questions, and to think about things for myself.”

- Sally Ride

Sally Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in Los Angeles, CA. She grew up playing sports and competing in national junior tennis tournaments. But it was her fascination with science that led her to become a physicist, a science writer, and an inspirational advocate for science literacy. In 1977, while finishing her Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University, she saw an ad in the student newspaper that NASA was looking for astronauts and, for the first time, was allowing women to apply. She was one of only 35 people – including six women – chosen to join the astronaut corps from among 8,000 applicants. When Challenger mission STS-7 blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on June 18, 1983, Sally Ride soared into history as the first American woman in space. Her second flight, STS-41G, also aboard Challenger, launched on October 5, 1984. Ride was the only person to serve on the presidential commissions investigating both the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia disaster in 2003. She retired from NASA in 1987 and became a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford. In 1989 she joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics and as director of the California Space Institute. In 2001 Ride founded her own company – Sally Ride Science – to pursue her longtime passion for motivating girls and boys to study science and explore careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Sally Ride died on July 23, 2012, after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. She is survived by Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, her life partner of 27 years; her mother, Joyce; sister, Bear, and Bear’s spouse, Susan; niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney. In 2013 she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama – a fitting tribute to a remarkable life that became a symbol of the ability of women to break barriers.

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