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AQ Top 5 Latin American Academics: María Teresa Ruiz González

By Stephen Handelman

This stargazer is blazing a trail for a new generation of Chilean scientists.

See the rest of the AQ Top 5

Astronomy was an old boys’ club in Chile when María Teresa Ruiz González fell in love with the stars. Spending long, cold nights huddled around a telescope in a remote desert observatory was not believed to be women’s work. “We were considered a distraction,” recalled Ruiz, who is now the first woman to head the Chilean Academy of Sciences.

Some distraction. Ruiz’s meteoric rise to the top of Chile’s science establishment capped...

Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.

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