The Orbits We Choose

On women in science, family, and the people who help us find our way.

I remember a public astronomy talk I gave at ExploraScience, a science centre in Quy Nhon, Vietnam. Every time I asked the children a question about the sky, little hands shot up, eager to answer. There were roughly as many girls as boys in the audience, and the girls were just as enthusiastic.

It was one of those moments that remind me why I became a scientist. For a child, the whole business of science can seem wonderfully simple. There is something you do not understand, you want to know why, and you ask.

Watching those children, I wondered how many would still be able to follow that curiosity when they grew up.

Of course, not all of them will become scientists. I hope they will have the freedom to discover other things they love just as much. But I wonder what happens between the little girl who raises her hand to ask about the stars and the grown woman who decides whether she can make a life studying them.

That question has been on my mind this October, partly because of a telescope.

On August 30, NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, one of the observatories we cosmologists have been eagerly waiting for. Roman will map enormous regions of the Universe, helping us understand how galaxies formed and evolved, and perhaps revealing something about the dark matter and dark energy that make up most of the cosmos.

The telescope carries the name of a remarkable astronomer.

As a child, Nancy Grace Roman went on walks with her mother, who showed her the birds, trees and flowers. But it was the constellations that captured her imagination. By the time she reached high school, she already knew she wanted to become an astronomer.

When she asked to take another year of algebra instead of Latin, her guidance counsellor wondered, with some disdain, what sort of lady would want to study mathematics.

Roman went ahead anyway. She earned her PhD in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. Ten years later, she joined the newly established NASA, eventually helping turn the ambitious idea of a large telescope in space into what became the Hubble Space Telescope.

Her colleagues called her the “Mother of Hubble.”

I like the story of how she got there. But another part of her life stays with me even more.

In 1979, when Roman was 54, she retired from NASA to care for her ageing mother. The woman who had first shown her the constellations now needed her daughter beside her. Roman returned to work two years later and continued contributing to astronomy.

There is something very tender about that circle closing.

It would be a mistake to see her decision as a failure of ambition. Perhaps caring for her mother mattered more to her at that moment than anything happening at NASA. I do not know, and I would not want to make that choice for her.

But I cannot help wondering what her career might have looked like if the circumstances had been different. And how many other scientists have faced similar choices without having Roman’s opportunities to return.

A few weeks ago, as Vietnam was approaching Women’s Day on October 20, I read an interview with Nguyễn Thị Hiệp, a Vietnamese biomedical scientist.

Hiệp now leads the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at International University in Ho Chi Minh City. She has seven granted patents and, in 2017, became the first Vietnamese scientist to receive the ASEAN–US Science Prize for Women.

Her journey into science was hardly straightforward. She once went against her father’s wishes to leave teaching and pursue research. Later, when she wanted to continue studying, he told her that if she had the courage to change her path, she should now have the courage to keep going.

I liked that response. Her father could not have known where the path would lead, but he was willing to let her find out.

After earning her PhD in South Korea and returning to Vietnam, however, Hiệp faced another decision. Her husband hoped she would focus on teaching and spend more time looking after the family.

She told him she had not pursued a doctorate merely to do housework. She wanted to do research and pass on what she had learned to her students.

Then she promised she would manage everything at home.

In Vietnamese, the expression was thu vén.

It is difficult to translate without losing something. It means arranging things, taking care of responsibilities, making sure the household runs smoothly. We often use it affectionately to praise women who can look after their families while pursuing a career. Thu vén carries a sense of competence, devotion and quiet sacrifice.

Hiệp found a practical solution. Domestic help was becoming more readily available in Vietnam, so she hired someone. She joked that her monthly salary at the time was barely enough to pay for the help. But it gave her time to do science.

I smiled when I read that. Then I found myself thinking about the salary.

I admire Hiệp’s determination. I also like how, later in the interview, she described coming to terms with her own femininity. She had once worried that being strong-willed made her somehow too masculine. Eventually, she came to understand that she could be entirely feminine while being the scientist she wanted to be.

There is something liberating in that thought. The idea of femininity had grown wide enough to include a laboratory.

Still, I kept coming back to that month’s salary and the promise to thu vén.

Why was finding time for science her responsibility?

I do not know how Hiệp and her husband subsequently divided their work at home, and it would be unfair to judge a family’s arrangements from a few lines in an interview. Perhaps she was perfectly happy with the solution. Perhaps there were other arrangements that we know nothing about.

What interests me is the expectation behind the story, one that is familiar in many Vietnamese families. A woman can pursue an ambitious career, sometimes with the encouragement of everyone around her, as long as she can also make sure that nothing at home is left undone.

We admire the women who manage both. And rightly so.

But what about the women who cannot?

Vietnam has made considerable progress in women’s education and professional participation. Women accounted for just over half of university teaching staff in the 2023–24 academic year.

The picture looks different at the highest academic ranks. Among 89 candidates seeking full-professor recognition at one stage of Vietnam’s 2025 national selection process, only ten were women.

These are not directly comparable groups. Senior professors come from earlier generations, different disciplines and different career paths. The figures do not tell us how many women encountered barriers, or how many made other choices.

But they make me curious about what happens along the way.

Another statistic seems particularly relevant to Hiệp’s story. According to Vietnam’s 2024 Labour Force Survey, women spent an average of 15.6 hours a week on unpaid domestic and family-care work, compared with 8.8 hours for men.

Almost seven hours a week.

That number covers the general population, not scientists specifically. I would not pretend that it gives us a formula for calculating lost discoveries or missing publications.

But I know how much can happen in seven hours of research.

Sometimes it is enough to finish an analysis that has been bothering you for days. Sometimes it is a long conversation with a colleague that sends a project in an entirely new direction. And sometimes you spend those seven hours getting nowhere, which is also part of doing science.

Research requires room for that kind of uncertainty. You cannot always schedule a good idea to arrive between two other responsibilities.

I have been fortunate to work in places where informal conversations are part of daily scientific life. An afternoon tea with colleagues can be unexpectedly productive. Someone mentions a problem, another person recognizes something familiar, and a collaboration begins almost by accident.

But that afternoon tea is only possible if you have the time to be there.

It is easy to describe scientific success in terms of talent, hard work and determination. Those things certainly matter. Yet the time available to exercise them also matters, and we do not all begin with the same amount.

This makes the question of fairness more difficult than simply applying the same rules to everyone.

I recently read an essay written in 2023 by Phan Thị Hà Dương, a Vietnamese mathematician, for VnExpress. She described how her understanding of equality had changed over time.

As a young mathematician, she disliked the suggestion that girls might need different arrangements in mathematics competitions. Girls were just as capable as boys, she thought. Why should they need special treatment?

I understand that instinct. Nobody wants their achievements to be regarded as a favour.

But as she grew older and saw more of the difficulties women faced, she began to distinguish treating everyone identically from giving everyone a fair opportunity. When helping establish a research programme for outstanding young mathematicians, she and her colleagues allowed women to apply up to the age of 45, compared with 40 for men.

One can debate whether different age limits for men and women are the best solution. Men can be caregivers too, and not all women’s careers follow the same pattern. Perhaps a more precise arrangement would recognize actual periods spent away from research.

But I appreciate the change in her thinking.

We tend to believe that fair competition means everyone playing by the same rules. That is true in an important sense. A mathematical proof is either correct or it is not. A physical theory must agree with observations, whoever proposes it.

Yet research careers are not mathematical proofs. A scientist’s publication record depends on ability and effort, but also on access to funding, colleagues, equipment, and years in which there was enough time to do the work.

Two people can be evaluated by the same rules without having had the same opportunity to meet them.

I do not think this means lowering scientific standards or guaranteeing anyone a particular career. It means being more careful about what we believe those standards are measuring.

For example, when someone takes time away from research to care for a child or an ageing parent, perhaps a grant or fellowship clock should be able to pause. A university could make it easier to return to research after an interruption. A scientific conference could consider whether childcare or flexible participation would allow more researchers to attend.

None of these changes can remove the difficult decisions people make in their private lives. Families must still decide how to share responsibilities. Researchers must still choose what matters to them.

But these are choices people should be able to make without the scientific community quietly treating every interruption as a lack of commitment.

I also think of Vũ Nguyên Nguyên, a Vietnamese schoolgirl who won a gold medal at this year’s International Physics Olympiad, earning a perfect score on the theoretical examination while still in eleventh grade.

She had initially been more interested in mathematics. Her curiosity about physics grew through watching experiments and looking up explanations for things that puzzled her.

Her mother recalled that, years earlier, the family had been hesitant to let her apply to a school far from home. But Nguyên Nguyên was determined. During the summer before the entrance examination, she woke up at 5:30 every morning, prepared her things, and asked her mother to take her to class.

Later, her physics teacher, Phạm Vũ Bích Hằng, helped her make the transition from mathematics into a subject she was still learning to love.

I find that story lovely.

It would be easy to focus entirely on Nguyên Nguyên’s extraordinary talent and discipline. I am sure both played a huge role in her achievement.

But I also picture the mother taking her daughter to class on those early mornings, and the teacher helping a student who was not yet confident in physics.

Neither could solve the problems for her. Neither could know whether she would one day win a gold medal.

They simply gave her a chance to find out.

We often talk about encouraging girls to study science, and encouragement matters. A father’s words can give a daughter the courage to continue. A teacher can help a student discover that she is capable of more than she imagined.

But encouragement becomes much more powerful when someone is also willing to share the work that makes the next step possible.

There is a difference between telling someone to follow her dreams and making room in everyday life for her to do so.

The Roman Space Telescope is now making its journey towards a special region of space called the second Lagrange point, or L2, roughly 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, away from the Sun.

There, the combined gravity of the Sun and Earth, together with the telescope’s motion, will allow it to orbit the Sun in step with our planet. It will be far enough away for a remarkably clear view of the Universe, yet remain in communication with the world that sent it there.

A telescope like Roman is much more than a mirror and a camera. It carries solar panels, antennas, computers, thrusters and fuel. Teams of scientists and engineers spent years calculating how to get it into space and how to make it work once it arrives.

Even after reaching its destination, Roman will occasionally need to fire its thrusters to maintain its orbit.

I find that a useful way of thinking about scientific careers.

We devote considerable attention to the launch: getting children interested in science, helping students enter university, supporting talented young researchers. We celebrate when someone wins a scholarship, completes a doctorate or receives a prestigious award.

Those are wonderful moments.

But a launch is only the beginning of a space mission. The years that follow require just as much thought and care.

And there is one place where the comparison breaks down.

A telescope has a destination chosen for it long before launch. A person does not have to.

Roman chose to care for her mother. Hiệp chose to continue her research while finding a way to manage family responsibilities. Nguyên Nguyên is still discovering what she wants to do with her life.

I would not presume to tell any of them which choice was right.

Family has its own pull. So do curiosity, ambition, love, and the wish to discover something nobody has understood before. Sometimes these forces lead us in different directions. Sometimes we discover that the life we wanted ten years ago is no longer the life we want today.

The freedom to make those choices matters more than reaching any particular destination.

I think back to the children at ExploraScience. I do not know whether any of those girls will become astronomers. Perhaps one will become a doctor, an artist, a teacher, or something she has not yet heard of. Perhaps one will begin studying physics and later decide that another path suits her better.

I hope they will grow up knowing that they are allowed to change their minds.

I also hope that when they choose something worth pursuing, they will find people willing to help make it possible: a parent who gets up early, a partner who shares the housework, a colleague who offers encouragement, a university that recognizes that life does not always proceed according to an academic calendar.

We tend to hear about the people who went farthest. There are awards for them, photographs, interviews, and occasionally even a telescope named in their honour.

We hear much less about those who might have gone just as far, but never had the opportunity.

That afternoon in Quy Nhon, the girls raised their hands as eagerly as the boys. They were not thinking about academic careers or how to balance work and family. They just wanted to answer my questions about the sky.

There was nothing extraordinary about it.

I hope we can keep it that way.

References

1. NASA, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925–2018).
2. NASA, NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches (August 30, 2026); Roman Commissioning.
3. Tụ Yên, PGS-TS Nguyễn Thị Hiệp: Cảm thấy thật nữ tính khi nghiên cứu khoa học, Thanh Niên (October 7, 2026).
4. National Statistics Office of Vietnam, Gender Statistics in Viet Nam 2024 (2026).
5. Hoài Nam, Ứng viên nam giáo sư, phó giáo sư luôn nhiều hơn nữ, vì sao?, Dân trí (September 2025).
6. Phan Thị Hà Dương, Công bằng hay bình đẳng?, VnExpress Góc nhìn (March 11, 2023).
7. Thanh Hùng, 11th grader scores perfect theory mark to win Physics Olympiad gold, VietNamNet (July 2026).