[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3196 Enrolled Bill (ENR)]

        H.R.3196

                     One Hundred Sixteenth Congress

                                 of the

                        United States of America


                          AT THE FIRST SESSION

          Begun and held at the City of Washington on Thursday,
           the third day of January, two thousand and nineteen


                                 An Act


 
To designate the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope as the ``Vera C. Rubin 
                             Observatory''.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
    This Act may be cited as the ``Vera C. Rubin Observatory 
Designation Act''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
    Congress finds the following:
        (1) Dr. Vera Rubin was born July 23, 1928, to Philip and Rose 
    Applebaum Cooper.
        (2) Dr. Rubin pursued her graduate studies at Cornell 
    University and Georgetown University, earning her Ph.D. in Physics 
    in 1954.
        (3) Dr. Rubin's Ph.D. thesis on galaxy motions provided 
    supporting evidence that galaxies are not uniformly distributed, 
    but exist in clusters.
        (4) Dr. Rubin continued to study the motions of galaxies, first 
    as research associate and assistant professor at Georgetown 
    University, and then as a member of the staff at the Carnegie 
    Institution of Washington Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.
        (5) Dr. Rubin faced barriers throughout her career because of 
    her gender.
        (6) For instance, one of the world's leading astronomy 
    facilities at the time, the Palomar Observatory, did not permit 
    women. Dr. Rubin persisted and was finally allowed to observe at 
    Palomar in 1965, the first woman officially allowed to do so.
        (7) In 1970, Dr. Rubin published measurements of the Andromeda 
    galaxy showing stars and gas orbiting the galaxy's center too fast 
    to be explained by the amount of mass associated with the light 
    output of the stars.
        (8) In the years that followed, Dr. Rubin and her collaborators 
    used their observations, in conjunction with the work by earlier 
    astronomers on the rotation of stars in spiral galaxies, to provide 
    some of the best evidence for the existence of dark matter.
        (9) This work contributed to a major shift in the conventional 
    view of the universe, from one dominated by ordinary matter such as 
    what produces the light of stars, to one dominated by dark matter.
        (10) Dr. Rubin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences 
    in 1981, the second woman astronomer to be so honored.
        (11) Dr. Rubin was awarded the President's National Medal of 
    Science in 1993 ``for her pioneering research programs in 
    observational cosmology which demonstrated that much of the matter 
    in the universe is dark, and for significant contributions to the 
    realization that the universe is more complex and more mysterious 
    than had been imagined''.
        (12) Dr. Rubin was an outspoken advocate for the equal 
    treatment and representation of women in science, and she served as 
    a mentor, supporter, and role model to many women astronomers 
    throughout her life.
        (13) The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, funded jointly by the 
    National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, will 
    honor the legacy of Dr. Rubin and her colleagues to probe the 
    nature of dark matter by mapping and cataloging billions of 
    galaxies through space and time.
SEC. 3. DESIGNATION.
    The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope shall be known and designated 
as the ``Vera C. Rubin Observatory''.
SEC. 4. REFERENCES.
    Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other 
record of the United States to the facility described in section 3 
shall be deemed to be a reference to the ``Vera C. Rubin Observatory''.

                               Speaker of the House of Representatives.

                            Vice President of the United States and    
                                               President of the Senate.