Margherita Hack, the unconventional astronomer

The Italian Embassy in Sweden in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to host an event in Stockholm on the Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack. The event will be held in the Auditorium of the Institute Monday the 28th of August at 6 pm. Refreshments will be served.

Marica Branchesi, full professor of Astrophysics at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, and Serena Gradari, science communicator, will offer a portrait of the scientist, highlighting her extraordinary personality and her undisputed successes in the field of research but also her social commitment to defending rights and freedoms.

Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific communicator, born on the 12th of June, 1922, in Florence. She dedicated her life to studying and spreading scientific knowledge to the broad public. Her passion for Astrophysics led her to become one of the most authoritative voices in the field of Astronomy in Italy. She worked as a full professor of Astronomy at Trieste University from 1964 to 1992. During that time, she became the first woman in the country to direct an astronomical observatory – the Trieste Astronomical Observatory – (until 1987), bringing it to international fame. In addition to her research activities, Margherita Hack wrote a great number of popular science books and delivered lectures throughout Italy, using her communication skills to make complex notions more easily accessible. Margherita Hack was also an advocate for civil rights and secularism, often criticizing conservative positions. She passed away on the 29th of June 2013 in Trieste, establishing a legacy of knowledge and passion for science that continue to inspire future generations.

Serena Gradari is an editorial project manager and a science communicator. After graduating in Astrophysics at the University of Trieste and obtaining a Doctorate in Astronautics at the University of Padova, she completed a Master in Science Communication at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste). She worked for almost ten years at Zanichelli Editore, an Italian educational publishing house, first as editor of Physics books and then as coordinator of digital contents. She is currently engaged in various collaborations ranging from publishing to European projects to science communication.

Marica Branchesi is Full Professor at the Gran Sasso Science Institute. She is President of the Scientific Council of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, and member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Space Agency. She is chair of the Einstein Telescope Observation Science Board to develop the science of the third generation gravitational-wave detector. Her scientific interest lies in the (astro)physics governing emission, formation and evolution of black holes and neutron stars. Her research activity is aimed at developing multi-messenger astronomy, which uses electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observations to probe the most energetic transient phenomena in the sky. In 2020, she has been awarded of the Occhialini Prize from SIF-IOP, and in 2018 of the “SIGRAV Prize”. She was included in Nature’s 10, the annual list of ten people who mattered in science in 2017 by Nature, and in TIME 100 list as one of the most influential people of 2018.