A star among the stars
Dra. Sylvia Torres Castilleja (known professionally as Sylvia Torres-Peimbert), one of the … er.. stars of Mexican science, has been elected president of the International Astronomical Union.
Although, as you’d expect in the land of the Aztecs and Mayans, astronomy has been one branch of science in which Mexicans have excelled, Dra. Torres-Peimbert is the first Mexican to head the IAU. And the first Mexican woman to obtain a PhD in Astronomy.
Now a UNAM professor, Torres-Peimbert is an expect not so much in stars, but in what lies between stars… interstellar medium… and is a known in the scientific community for her work in with satellites and deep-space research. It’s understandable that she coupled her name with that of her husband, astrophysicist Manuel Peimbert Sierra… I guess you could call that a marriage made in the heavens. No slouch himself, Peimbert calculated the relative mass of the universe when he was 33,
Trackbacks