Sally Heap
When Sally Heap entered
Wellesley College, she put down "biology" as
her professional interest. Mostly due to an excellent
teacher she soon changed her mind - and she hasn't
regretted it since, not only because astronomy offers
interesting research subjects, but also because
of the colleagues. Astronomers are mostly a happy
bunch of people, she realized over the years.
After Wellesley College, Sally Heap moved on to
the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to get her
PhD, but she soon headed back east to the Goddard
Space Flight Center, where she has worked for
the past 30 years. It's home in more than one respect,
as she grew up just 20 miles away from the Flight
Center. Through a remarkable coincidence, Sally
and Heritage team member and co-founder
Howard Bond were in the same 6th-grade class
at Bethesda Elementary School, more decades ago
than either of them cares to discuss. Both of them
remember being excited by scientific subjects even
then.
Heap focuses her research on hot stars, and she
stays close to the skies even in her spare time,
when she likes to pilot her small two-seater-plane.
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