Rigby was an undergraduate student at Pennsylvania State University.[5][6] She was advised by Jane Charlton, who brought her to the first telescope she worked with, the McDonald Observatory. She gained a research interest the growth of galaxies with supermassive black holes.[3] She received bachelor degrees in physics and astronomy in 2000,[7][1] completing an undergraduate dissertation on Magnesium II emission systems.[8]
Rigby came out as lesbian in 2000. When she joined the University of Arizona, homosexuality was against state law.[11][12] There, she met a fellow graduate student in astronomy,[3] Andrea Leistra, whom she later married.[7] The couple has a son, born in 2013 or 2014.[13] She has also participated in LGBT rights activism; during her postdoctoral work, she campaigned against a California proposition that would have banned same-sex marriage in California.[4]
In 2010, Rigby was appointed deputy operations project scientist at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and civil servant at Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland.[14] Upon taking the job, she read a third-party report on the telescope's delays and budget overruns.[3] Rigby's job involved reinstating featured that had been cut due to cost,[4] ensuring the feasibility of design changes, and communicating between scientists and engineers.[3]
Rigby at the White House during the 2022 presentation of the JWST's first images
Rigby was made JWST's project scientist for operations in 2018.[14] In the five months after the it launched on December 25, 2021, Rigby's job was to commission the JWST.[4] Her job was to assess the performance of the telescope, such as the amount of light leak that could obscure the data.[3][4] The telescope was very successful.[3][1] In July 2022, Rigby published the first scientific results from JWST[4] and appeared at the White House for the unveiling of the JWST's first images.[3]
Rigby is responsible for TEMPLATES (Targeting Extremely Magnified Panchromatic Lensed Arcs and Their Extended Star Formation), a project that looks to use high signal-to-noise NIRSpec and mid-infrared integral field units (IFU) spectroscopy to image 4 gravitationally lensed galaxies.[15] She announced the project's discovery of hydrocarbons in a galaxy over twelve billion light years away in June 2023.[3] In early July 2023, Rigby was chosen as the senior project scientist for the JWST, succeeding John C. Mather.[16] In this position, she managed the scientific goals of the telescope.[3]
President Joe Biden awarded Rigby with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 3, 2024,[7] in recognition of her work on JWST. In her acceptance speech, Rigby expressed gratitude for previous honorees of the award: Ride and gay rights activists Harvey Milk and Bayard Rustin.[9] In her hometown, the Seaford Museum planned an exhibit about the JWST for the following summer.[1][2]
Rigby has worked to engage the public with science.[9] She has frequently made public appearances wearing JWST-themed accessories. Writing for Science News, Lisa Grossman said, "Rigby's palpable joy in discussing the success of the JWST ... has made her one of the public faces of the telescope." Rigby spoke to the publication about her popularity, "I understand the desire to humanize something that can seem really big and impersonal. But I don’t like the singling out. I try to reflect it back to the team."[3]
Rigby has worked on supporting inclusivity in the field, including co-organizing conferences and writing a white paper about the subject.[3] Rigby was a founding member of the American Astronomical Society Committee for Sexual-Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy (originally the Working Group on LGBTQ Equality) in January 2012, and later served as the committee's Board Liaison.[7] In 2015 she co-organised Inclusive Astronomy, a worldwide initiative to celebrate inclusivity and equity in astronomy.[17][18][non-primary source needed] Rigby has said her experience as a queer person has made her a better astronomer by influencing her leadership skills and thoughts toward community impact.[3][11][12]
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