Irene Cruz-González Espinosa (born 1953) is a Mexican astronomer whose research interests include the nuclear activity in galaxies, the observation of galaxies and their insterstellar medium,

star formation Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in The "medium" is present further soon.-->interstellar space

, and optical and infrared telescope instrumentation. She is a researcher and professor in the Institute of Astronomy at the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...

(UNAM).

Education and career

Irene Cruz-González was born in 1953, in Mexico City,. She is the daughter of two artists, her father Carlos Cruz-González Aliphat was a landscape designer and her mother Rebeca Espinosa was an artist. Her brother Carlos Cruz-González was also an astronomer who died early in his research career. She is married to the mathematician Javier Bracho and has two sons Felipe and Adrian Bracho Cruz-González. She studied physics as an undergraduate at UNAM and worked on a BSc dissertation in astronomy supervised by

Silvia Torres-Peimbert Silvia Torres-Peimbert (also known as Silvia Linda Torres Castilleja, born in 1940) is a Mexican astronomer. She won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2011 for Latin America for her work determining the chemical composition of n ...

. Afterwards Irene Cruz-González went to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

for graduate study in astronomy, earning a master's degree in 1979 under the supervision of

Giovanni Fazio Giovanni Fazio is an American physicist at Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. He is an astrophysicist who has initiated and participated in multiple observation programs. Career In 1962 he joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Obs ...

and a Ph.D. in 1984. Her doctoral dissertation, ''Continuum distributions of active galactic nuclei'', was supervised by John P. Huchra. She returned to Mexico and joined the UNAM Institute of Astronomy as a researcher in 1984.

Book

With Abraham Nosnik and Elsa Recillas, Irene Cruz-González is a coauthor of a book on

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

, ''El hombre de la torre inclinada: Galileo Galilei'' (1st ed., Gatopardo, 1985; edited also in Chile and Colombia).

Recognition

Irene Cruz-González is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. From 2010 to 2018 she was part of UNAM´s government board (Junta de Gobierno). UNAM gave her their National University Prize in 2002, and the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz prize in 2006.

References

External links

Interview with Cruz-González on light pollution
UDGTV * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cruz-Gonzalez, Irene 1953 births Living people Mexican astronomers Women astronomers National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni Harvard University alumni Academic staff of the National Autonomous University of Mexico Members of the Mexican Academy of Sciences