Today, the famous search engine Google has shared an interactive Google doodle and celebrating Margherita Hack’s 99th Birthday, who Italian professor, activist, author, and astrophysicist Margherita “The Lady of the Stars” Hack.
Margherita Hack Knight Grand Cross OMRI (Italian: [marɡeˈriːta ˈ(h)ak]; 12 June 1922 – 29 June 2013) was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour. On 12 June 2021, Google celebrated her with Google Doodle on her 99th birthday.
Google Doodle: Margherita Hack was the first female director of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory. Born on June 12, 1922 in Florence, Italy, Hack was the first female director of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory. She was an atheists and did not believe on GOD, the existence of soul, rebirth after death etc.
Born 12 June 1922
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Died 29 June 2013 (aged 91)
Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
Nationality Italian
Alma mater University of Florence
Spouse(s) Aldo De Rosa (m. 1944)
Awards Targa Giuseppe Piazzi (1994)
Premio Internazionale Cortina Ulisse (1995)
Scientific career
Fields astrophysics
popular science
Institutions University of Trieste
Born at the corner of via Cento Stelle (hundred stars) in Florence, Margherita Hack was the first woman to lead an astronomical observatory in Italy. She is the most well known Italian astrophysicist.
Margherita Hack Knight Grand Cross OMRI was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour.
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic – awarded on 28 May 2012
Gold Medal of the Italian Order of Merit for Culture and Art – awarded on 27 May 1998
“Us atheist people, we believe we have to act properly and honestly for a moral principle and not because we expect an award in Paradise.”
“We(atheists) act in good conscience because we believe in moral principles, not because we expect in reward in Heaven.”
“Spirituality, for someone like me who doesn’t believe in God, in the existence of soul, in something after-death, is the capacity to love and to understand others – humans, and animals – is the capacity to not do to others what you don’t want other people to do to you.”
“It’s not God who gave us moral laws, but this doesn’t make them less important”
“I think our brain is our soul. I don’t believe in after-life and much less in a sort of buildings-like heaven, where you meet friends, enemies, relatives.”
Happy birthday, Margherita Hack, and thank you for inspiring future generations to shoot for the stars!
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