María Teresa Ruiz

María Teresa Ruiz
María Teresa Ruiz in 2015
Born	24 September 1946 Santiago de Chile
Nationality	Chilean
Known for	discovering kelu 1

María Teresa Ruiz (born 24 September 1946) is a Chilean astronomer. She was the first woman to receive a National Science Award.

Ruiz was born in Santiago de Chile in 1946. She was the first woman to successfully study astronomy at the University of Chile before she studied at Princeton University and gained her masters in astrophysics. After she received a postdoctoral position at Tiestre Observatory, Ruiz worked for two years in UNAM, the Institute of Astronomy in Mexico. In 1997, she was the first woman to receive the Chilean National Award for science.

Ruiz did research at Trieste, Mexico and New York City before she gained a Guggenheim fellowship. She discovered Kelu 1, a brown dwarf.

As of May 2016, she is a member of the Chilean Academy of Science and a professor at the University of Chile, where she teaches astronomy. She is also a member of the Centro de Astrofísica CATA (CATA Centre for Astrophysics).