Nancy Elizabeth Weber Boggess (1925 – 2019) was an astrophysicist known for her work in developing telescopes that were used in space by NASA.
[5][6]: 92 Boggess oversaw grant programs at NASA,[6]: 118–122 including serving as a NASA project scientist[7] for the development and launch of Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), which was able to map the entire night sky in the infrared spectrum.
[9][10][11] Boggess was the project scientist[12] for the team that developed the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)[13][6]: 200, 205, 234, 255, 269 which earned a Nobel Prize for John C. Mather and George Smoot in Physics in 2006.
[14] Under Boggess' guidance, COBE was a combination of multiple instruments that made precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation that was left over from the Big Bang.
[17] In 2006 Boggess was among the team members who received the Gruber Prize in Cosmology for their work on COBE.