Photograph of María Luisa Aguilar (via Space UNMSM/YouTube)

 

Life

María Luisa Aguilar was born in 1938 in Jaunja, Peru. As a child, her family moved to Lima, where she attended Institución Educativa Elvira García y García, an emblematic all-girls school dedicated to the education of women. ¹ María likely developed her interest in mathematics and physics here. ²

At the age of 20, María was admitted into the National University of San Marcos (short name San Marcos), where she completed a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. ³ She then left for Argentina to pursue Astronomy at the Astronomy and Geophysics Observatory of the National University of La Plata, since there was no Astronomy program in Peru at that time. María specialised in stellar spectroscopy, stellar atmospheres and variable stars. Thus, María Luisa Aguilar became the first Peruvian to receive a degree in astronomy, as well as the first female Peruvian astronomer. She continued working in Argentina for the next 11 years before returning to Peru in 1969. ⁴

A year after her return to Peru, María Luisa Aguilar joined the faculty of the National University of San Marcos, where she went on to develop a seminar for the dissemination of Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1981: “Viernes Astronómicos” (“Astronomical Fridays”), renamed in 2001 as the “Permanent Astronomy and Space Sciences Seminar” (SPACE) the oldest student and teacher-organised talks and conferences. Although Viernes Astronómicos was officially established in 1981, sources have also suggested that she had been forming the group way back in the early years of her employment at San Marcos. ⁵

In 1982, María Luisa Aguilar became the first Peruvian to join the International Astronomical Union (IAU), there she was a part of the Commissions for “Education and Development of Astronomy” and “Spectral Stars.” In 1984, she was selected for the IAU Visiting Professors Program, successfully setting up the program for the first time in Peru, at San Marcos. ⁶ The program brought astronomers from all over Latin America to teach at the university, bringing Peru into the focus of the international astronomical sciences community. ⁷ Around that time, she also reportedly discovered a star with the highest phosphorus content observed in all stars at the time. ⁸

Between 1999 and 2000, she collaborated with the Peruvian newspaper “El Comercio”’s Sunday supplement, where she disseminated knowledge about science and astronomy to the public. She then went on to host her own programs in the media: “Culture, Science and Technology” on Radio Cielo and “Science and Culture”, a part of “Faces of Culture” on Juan 19 TV. ⁹

For International Year of Astronomy 2009, María organised public education and outreach activities as the IAU’s point of contact, including “Itinerant Telescope”, the “Galileo Teacher Training Program.” She also published a children’s book called “The Planet Tacu Tacu.” ¹⁰

María continued teaching at San Marcos until her death in 2015. The San Marcos Astronomical Observatory for Education and Tourism that she promoted was inaugurated in her honour in 2016. ¹¹

 

Work

María Luisa Aguilar was committed to developing interest and access to astronomy in Peru. This can be seen in her involvement with the IAU. In the group’s 1985 annual conference, María led discussions on “the importance of exchange of astronomers” and on “the popularisation of astronomy.” ¹² This was a year after her proposal for the Visiting Professors Program to be implemented in Peru came into fruition, showing that she had further goals in mind: she concerned herself with popularising the field among the “general public,” stating that “one must bear in mind those who probably will never attend any school, therefore one cannot use a very specialised language.” ¹³ She continued to take into account factors of economic recession and high drop-out rates in her work to “sustain astronomical development” with SPACE throughout the next few decades, “prioritis[ing] the astronomical field that will energise people” and are financially possible. For example, to achieve the goal of forming a “specialised group” in the study of variable stars, they spent funds towards a Meade LX200 8’’ Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, a CCD camera, a photometer and a spectrograph. ¹⁴

She also used her connections with the IAU and other international astronomical entities to invite experts in those fields to collaborate with her group at San Marcos. ¹⁵ This had an immediate effect on students: As her former student, the astronomer Rafael Carlos Reyes, stated to El Comercio, “When the foreign professors arrived, the quality of teaching was noticeable and that had a great impact on the students. This is why many of us wanted to pursue graduate studies.” ¹⁶ By 2000, she had expanded her efforts of updating faculties of sciences and developing astronomy programs to other Peruvian universities like Universidade Nacional de Education (UNE, the teacher-training college); SPACE had also reached many regions of Peru through the formation of branches in local universities across towns and cities. ¹⁷

At the end of her speech at the 2000 Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) conference, María mentioned that she had founded a non-profit organisation to support education of space science and technology in Peru, called “SPECTRUM”. ¹⁸

In the 2009 IAU Regional Latin American Meeting of Astronomy, she spoke once again about the importance of outreach and education, especially since San Marcos was “the only Peruvian institution working for the Peruvian astronomical development as a career since 1970.” María revealed that she was currently working on a project with visiting lecturers to precipitate the introduction of doctoral studies in astronomy at the university. ¹⁹

 

Experience and Legacy as the first Peruvian Woman Astronomer

María Luisa Aguilar’s path to pursue her passion was not an easy one. She once said in an interview that when she went to Argentina to do her degree in Astronomy, “[She] had found many colonial vestiges that [she] had forgotten… There was a very harsh gerontocracy and a very dark machismo in the institutions.” ²⁰

Likewise, even when she returned to Peru as a professional and pioneer, she received backlash from her fellow professors, who – solely because of her – looked down on Astronomy by calling it “a career for women.” ²¹

However, her persistence and contagious passion for Astronomy earned the respect of students of all genders. These students followed in her path and went on to become the first generation of Peruvian astronomers. Though they too had to leave the country to study post-graduate Astronomy, they subsequently returned after getting their degrees to join her effort in improving higher education in Astronomy in Peru. As Richard Toribio Saavedra, a nanophysics professor at the University of Callao and María’s former student said, “She made astronomy be taken seriously in the country.”²²

 

Bibliography

Aguilar, María L. “Astronomy in Peru.” Amateur-Professional Partnerships in Astronomy ASP Conference Series Ed. J.R. Percy & J.B. Wilson 220 (2000). https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2000ASPC..220…26A.

Aguilar, María L. “San Marcos Astronomical Project and Doctoral Prospectus.” XII Latin American IAU Regional Meeting (Eds. G. Magris, G. Bruzual, & L. Carigi) Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica (Serie de Conferencias) 35 (May 2009), 319. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~rmaa/.

Garcia, Yerson C. “Día De La Mujer | La Historia De María Luisa Aguilar, La Primera Astrónoma En El Perú.” El Comercio Perú. Last modified March 8, 2019. https://elcomercio.pe/tecnologia/ciencias/dia-mujer-historia-maria-luisa-aguilar-primera-astronoma-peruana-noticia-614845-noticia/?foto=2.

“Institución Educativa Emblemática Elvira García Y García, La Enciclopedia Libre.” Wikipedia, La Enciclopedia Libre. Accessed July 13, 2024. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instituci%C3%B3n_Educativa_Emblem%C3%A1tica_Elvira_Garc%C3%ADa_y_Garc%C3%ADa.

International Astronomical Union. “International Astronomical Union Fifty-First Meeting of the Executive Committee Garching bei München, FRG 12-15 September 1983.” International Astronomical Union | IAU. n.d. https://www.iau.org/static/administration/ecminutes/ec51minutes.pdf.

“María Luisa Aguilar.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Last modified July 9, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Luisa_Aguilar#cite_note-4.

Stadler, Marta M. “María Luisa Aguilar, Científica Peruana Deslumbrada Por Los Misterios Del Universo.” Mujeres Con Ciencia. Last modified November 6, 2021. https://mujeresconciencia.com/2021/11/10/maria-luisa-aguilar-cientifica-peruana-deslumbrada-por-los-misterios-del-universo/.

Swings, Jean-Pierre. “Transactions of the International Astronomical Union Proceedings of the Nineteenth General Assembly Delhi 1985.” Transactions of the International Astronomical Union. Last modified 2012