"You're not going to be a scientist. We're not gonna waste educating you just to go be a housewife."

Jill Tarter, the astrophysicist who inspired Jodie Foster's character in Carl Sagan's movie Contact, dedicated her career to the search for extraterrestrial life. She is now the Director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California... but it wasn't an easy path.

After her scholarship was taken away, she went to the dean of the engineering college and said, "Dean Corson, this isn't fair. I've been on dean's list every semester." And he kindly said, "You know, you're right. It isn't fair. It isn't fair at all."

She has no idea what he said when he called up Procter & Gamble, but he got her that scholarship back.

20 years later, when Dean Corson was the president of Cornell, he had an advisory committee and Jill Tarter was on it. She was able to go up to him all those years later and say, "See, President Corson? Thank you for believing in me. I'm on your advisory committee for this fantastic telescope and I have to thank you once again."