Google Doodle honors astronaut and educator Sally Ride
In June 1983, shortly before Sally Ride became America's first female astronaut, Late Night host Johnny Carson quipped that聽the space shuttle might be delayed because the physicist and jet pilot had to .
At the time, scrutiny surrounding Dr. Ride's gender was commonplace. In a press conference weeks before her first launch, according to her New York Times obituary, she faced questions such as
Today, 59 women have flown into space, 45 of them American, according to NASA.
On Tuesday, Google honored Ride, who died in 2012, on what would have been her birthday, with five different Doodles (refresh to see the different drawings.) Google collaborated with Ride鈥檚 life partner, Tam O鈥橲haughnessy, to create the whimsical animations.
"As the first American woman in space, Sally Ride 鈥� who would have been 64 today 鈥� captured the nation鈥檚 imagination as a symbol of the ," Dr. O'Shaughnessy wrote in a guest post on Google's blog.
"But her historic flight represented just one aspect of a remarkable and multifaceted life. She was also a physicist, a science writer, and an inspirational advocate for keeping kids excited about science as they go through school."
Ride held master鈥檚 and PhD degrees in physics from Stanford University; taught as a professor at the University of California, San Diego; played as a nationally ranked tennis player at Stanford; and was determined to inspire kids to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
Normally reticent about her personal life, Ride threw her star power behind education. In her blog post, O'Shaughnessy quotes Ride:
"Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers. I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way!"
Ride and O鈥橲haughnessy founded , an organization dedicated to creating 聽wrote O鈥橲haughnessy.
According to published by the American Association of University Women, women are gaining traction in STEM education and careers, but still lag behind men. In 1970, just 1.7 percent of the employed professional engineers were women; by 2000, this number had increased to more than 10 percent. Other science fields, including computer science, physics, astronomy, chemistry, math, and the biological sciences show similar progressive trends for women in the workplace,
"Women鈥檚 educational progress should be celebrated, yet more work is needed to ensure that women and girls have full access to educational and employment opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics," note the report's authors.
Ride 鈥渋nspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars and later fought tirelessly to help them get there by advocating for a greater focus on science and math in our schools,鈥� 聽said in 2012. 鈥淪ally鈥檚 life showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve.鈥�
