[United States Statutes at Large, Volume 133, 116th Congress, 1st Session]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


Public Law 116-97
116th Congress

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.

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(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''.

Approved December 20, 2019.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY--H.R. 3196:
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HOUSE REPORTS: No. 116-132 (Comm. on Science, Space, and Technology).
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 165 (2019):
July 23, considered and passed House.
Dec. 18, considered and passed Senate.