Interview discusses Vera Rubin's childhood experience looking at the stars; influence and encouragement of parents; early reading in science; influence and importance of Maria Mitchell; education at Vassar; graduate work at Cornell; discouragement from going into science at Cornell; influence of Martha Stahr (now M. S. Carpenter); masters thesis on large-scale motion of galaxies; motivation in thesis work; problem of coming into science from a nontraditional background; community reception of masters thesis work; experience of delivering a paper at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in 1951 while nursing a newborn; community resistance to idea of a bulk rotation of galaxies; graduate work at Georgetown; exclusion of wives from the Applied Physics Laboratory; influence of George Gamow; reasons why Rubin did not continue her work on large-scale motions; Rubin's dislike for work that is controversial; support and influence of Rubin's husband; thesis work on correlation of galaxies; different kinds of geniuses in science; personality and style of Gamow; motivation of work on rotation curves of galaxies; importance of Kent Ford's spectrograph; Rubin's preference for problems that few other people are interested in; history of discovery of flat rotation curves and implications for dark matter; initial reaction (and surprise) to discovery of dark matter; community reaction to discovery of flat rotation curves; attitude toward the horizon problem; attitude toward the progress of science; attitude toward the flatness problem; attitude toward the inflationary universe model; reaction to de Lapparent, Geller, and Huchra's work on large-scale inhomogeneities; Rubin's belief that there are many things we don't know; importance of work to determine what motions of galaxies should be; visualization in science; relation between theory and observation; outstanding problems in cosmology; dark matter; experience of women in science; cultural conditioning of gender differences at an early age; Rubin's own experiences with gender discrimination in science; ideal design of the universe; question of whether the universe has a point.