Monica Tosi
(INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico
di Bologna)
I
was born in Florence, Italy and raised in Rome.
When I was attending high-school I already knew
I wanted to be an astronomer, but I didn't know
exactly why ...
I
got my “laurea” degree in Astronomy
in Rome and then went to Yale, with an Italian fellowship.
I chose Yale because a good friend advised me that
there I could work with "the best person to
learn how to do work in astronomy"- Beatrice
Tinsley. My boyfriend was already on the east coast,
at CFA in Cambridge, so I thought I'd better go
as soon as possible. I did; it was 1980; and thanks
to this rapid decision I had the chance of spending
one year with Beatrice, who prematurely died in
March 1981. Beatrice gave me both the cultural bases
and the technical tools to work on the chemical
evolution of galaxies, which is still one of my
major research fields. Even more importantly, perhaps,
she introduced me to the "woman's approach
to astronomy."
Back
to Italy, I got a position at the Bologna Observatory,
where I'm still working now as a full professor.
From what I've seen in these twenty years, I do
think that the woman's way in astronomy is great.
I'm
still working on galaxy evolution, both from the
theoretical and the observational points of view,
interpreting observational data on star clusters
and galaxies, deriving star formation histories,
and computing chemical evolution models for galaxies
of different morphological types.
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