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She graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. He was once again instrumental in approving her admission.
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The tennis coach was eager to have her on the team, and by coincidence, Fred Hargadon was now the dean of admissions there. Ride applied for a transfer to Stanford University as a junior. She concluded that she did not have what it took to be a professional tennis player. Her foray into professional tennis was unsuccessful her whole body ached, and she realized that far more effort would be necessary in order to reach the required level of fitness. She was romantically involved with the teaching assistant, John Tompkins, but it ended in September when he went to Moscow to conduct research at the Institute for High Energy Physics. She was the only woman majoring in physics. : 32–38 She entered the University of California, Los Angeles, where she enrolled in courses in Shakespeare and quantum mechanics, earning A's in both. After three semesters at Swarthmore, she returned to California in January 1970, with the aim of becoming a professional tennis player. But Ride was homesick for California, and in those days before Title IX women's tennis was not well-supported at the college level Swarthmore had no indoor courts and she could not practice when it snowed. She defended her title in May 1969, winning in straight sets. She won all six of her intercollegiate tennis matches, and became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's Singles champion. She played golf, and made Swarthmore's field hockey varsity team. : 28–29 She commenced classes at Swarthmore on September 18, 1968. She was interviewed by Fred Hargadon, the dean of admissions, who was impressed by both her mental and her tennis ability. Her friend Sue Okie was interested in going to Swarthmore College, so Ride applied too. She graduated in June 1968, and then took a class in advanced math at Santa Monica College during the summer break. Ride resolved to become an astrophysicist. : 19–22 Elizabeth Mommaerts, who taught human physiology, became a mentor. : 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, an exclusive all-girls private school in Los Angeles. By 1963 Ride was ranked number 20 in Southern California for girls aged 12 and under. : 12–15 She enjoyed sports, but tennis most of all, and at age 10 was coached by Alice Marble, a former world number one player. In Spain, Ride played tennis for the first time. In 1960, when she was nine years old, the family spent a year traveling in Europe. Ride grew up in the Van Nuys and Encino neighborhoods of Los Angeles. : 4–6 He became a political science professor at Santa Monica College. Bill and then earned a master's degree in education at the University of California in Los Angeles. After the war he had gone to Haverford College on the G.I. Army in Europe with the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II. Her mother, who was of Norwegian descent, had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility. : 7–8 Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. : 4–6 She had one sibling, Karen, known as "Bear". Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, : 6 the elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce Ride née Anderson. Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012. Having been married to astronaut Steven Hawley during her spaceflight years and in a private, long-term relationship with former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O'Shaughnessy, she is the first space traveler known to have been LGBT. She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both. Ride worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. After flying two missions on the Space Shuttle Challenger, Ride left NASA in 1987. She was the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.
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Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist.