Sally Ride

At 61 years old, Sally Ride physical status not available right now. We will update Sally Ride's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American explorer and physicist.

Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman to fly in 1983.

After Russian cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982), Ride became the third woman in space overall.

Ride is the youngest American explorer to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32.

She left NASA in 1987 after flying twice on the Orbiter Challenger. Ride spent two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then as a physics professor at University of California, San Diego, primarily studying nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering.

She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle disasters, being the first person to participate in both.

On July 23, 2012, a ride died of pancreatic cancer.

Early life

Sally Kristen Ride was born in Los Angeles, California, on May 26, 1951; 6 the elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce Ride née Anderson. 4–6 She had one sibling, Karen, who was known as "Bear" at the time. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church of Chichester, 7-8. Her mother, who was of Norwegian descent, had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility. During World War II, her father served with the United States Army in Europe with the 103rd Infantry Division. On the G.I., he went to Haverford College after the war. Bill earned a master's degree in education at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was 4–6 and became a political science professor at Santa Monica College.

In Los Angeles's Van Nuys and Encino neighborhoods, the ride soared. The family spent a year in Europe in 1960, when she was nine years old. Ride played tennis in Spain for the first time. 12–15 She loved sports, but tennis more so, and Alice Marble, a former world number one, coached her at age 10. Ride was ranked 20th in Southern California for girls aged 12 to 13. 22 She attended Encino Elementary School, Portola Junior High (now Portola Middle School), Birmingham High School, and then as a sophomore on a tennis scholarship, Westlake School for Girls, Los Angeles' exclusive all-girls private school. Elizabeth Mommaerts, a 19-22 woman who specialized in human anatomy, became a mentor. Ride set out to become an astrophysicist. She graduated in June 1968 and then took a advanced math class at Santa Monica College during the summer break.

: 30–31

Sue Okie, her friend, was keen on going to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, so Ride joined them. Fred Hargadon, dean of admissions, interviewed her, and she was captivated by her mental and tennis skills. She was given a full scholarship. 28-29 She began classes at Swarthmore on September 18, 1968. She competed golf and was a member of Swarthmore's field hockey varsity team. She won all six of her intercollegiate tennis tournaments and also became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's Singles Champion. In May 1969, she defended her title by winning in straight sets. But Ride was homesick for California, and in those days before Title IX women's tennis was not well-funded at the college level; Swarthmore had four tennis courts but no indoor courts; and she couldn't participate when it snowed. She returned to California in January 1970, with the intention of becoming a professional tennis player after three semesters at Swarthmore.

: 32–38

Ride graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she took Shakespeare and quantum mechanics courses, earning an A's in both fields. She was the only woman studying physics at a university. She was passionately involved with John Tompkins, the teaching assistant, but the friendship came to an end in September when he returned to Moscow to conduct research at the Institute for High Energy Physics. Her foray into professional tennis was a failure; after playing three matches in a single August morning, her entire body ached the following day. She found that much more effort would be needed in order to reach the desired level of fitness: she needed to exercise for eight hours a day. She found that she did not have to be a pro tennis player.

: 40–42

As a freshman, Ride applied for a transfer to Stanford University. The tennis coach was keen to have her on the team, and Fred Hargadon was now the dean of admissions there. He was instrumental in approving her admission once more. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1973. 44–45 She then obtained a Master of Science degree in physics in 1975 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1978. Her research interests included astronomy and free-electron lasers. Under the guidance of Arthur B. C. Walker Jr., she wrote her doctoral dissertation on "the interaction of X-rays with the outer space medium."

Molly Tyson, a year younger than her, was a year ago at Stanford. The two players were known as junior tennis players on the tennis circuit. Despite being rated number one at Stanford and Tyson was number six, the two teams played doubles together. In response to the university's refusal to enroll in the Pac-8 Conference in women's tennis, Ride later left the Stanford tennis team. Ride and Tyson met in a 45-49 year old relationship. They taught tennis lessons to earn money, and they were counselors at Dennis Van der Meer's TennisAmerica summer camp in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, from 1971 to 1972. Ride performed in a doubles match with Van der Meer against Billie Jean King, the world's top-ranked female tennis player, and Dick Peters, the camp's camp manager; Martin Luther King III and Dexter King served as ball boys. Billie Jean King served as both a mentor and a mentor. In 1973, Ride watched her defeat Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs. Tyson and Craig Colson divorced in 1975, and Ride followed Bill Colson, a fellow graduate physics student who was recently divorced.

: 54–60

Source