Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut, physicist, and engineer. Born in Los Angeles, she was as a young sport girl searching for a tennis career. She entered Stanford University in early life as a junior student, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English and physics. At Stanford, she earned a master's degree in 1975 and a PhD in physics in 1978 while doing research on the interaction of X-rays beams with the interstellar medium. Astrophysics and free electron lasers were her specific interest areas of study. She joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride was the third woman in space overall, after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the US space Challinger shuttle (1984), she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University’s Center for International security and Arms control, then at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the federal committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only women to participate in both. Sally Ride died in the age of 61 according to medical journals in pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012. Ride was extremely private about her personal life and she left probably no children. She is also founder of Sally Ride Science.