Silvia Torres Peimbert

Life

Torres-Peimbert was born in Mexico City in 1940. She studied Physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico before going on to the University of California in Berkeley. She returned to Mexico to conduct post-doctoral research at her alma mater. She studies the creation of stars and the mass thrown out by mid-size stars. She has studied the distribution of helium left over from the first creation. In 1973 she became a professor at NAUM and from 1998 until 2002 she was a director of that institution. During this time she has worked closely with Manuel Peimbert. Torres-Peimbert and Peimbert had both been students of Guillermo Haro (Haro was in 1959 the first person elected to the Royal Astronomical Society from a developing country).

She was the editor of the learned Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

She won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2011 on behalf of Latin America. The award is given annually to leading women scientists with an award being given to five continents. She won the award for investigating the "chemical composition of nebulae" which the organisers considered essential to our understanding of the beginning of the cosmos. She also won the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2012 for her work in determining the quantities of helium and other different elements during the development of the universe. Knowing about these elements allows cosmologists to understand the evolution of stars and galaxies.

Torres-Peimbert was named President of the International Astronomical Union for the 2015-2018 period —the second woman ever to preside the IAU—, a member of the American Astronomical Society and the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World.