Early Years
The elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce (née Anderson), Sally was born in Encino, California, a district of the city of Los Angeles. She had one sibling, Karen "Bear" Ride, who is a Presbyterian minister. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Ride's mother had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women’s correctional facility. Her father had been a political science professor at Santa Monica College.
She attended Portola Junior High (now Portola Middle School), and then Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles (now Harvard-Westlake School) on a scholarship. In addition to being interested in science, she was a nationally ranked tennis player. Ride attended Swarthmore College for three semesters, took physics courses at UCLA, and then entered Stanford University as a junior, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English and physics. At Stanford, she earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in physics, while doing research in astrophysics and free electron laser physics.
Read more about this topic: Sally Ride
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