Margherita Hack

Margherita Hack (12 June 1922 to 29 June 2013) was an Italian astrophysicist and science communicator; the asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour. Born in Florence, she received a degree in physics from the University of Florence in 1945, with a thesis on Cepheid variables based on her studies at the Arcetri Observatory. She was full professor of astronomy at the University of Trieste from 1964 until 1992, and she was the first Italian woman to administer the Trieste Astronomical Observatory, which she ran from 1964 to 1987 and brought to international fame. She worked at many American and European observatories, was for a long time a member of working groups of ESA and NASA, founded the magazine L'Astronomia in 1978, and wrote popular science books.