Margherita Hack

Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist and science communicator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour.

Life and career

Personal life and education

Hack was born in Florence, Tuscany. Her father Roberto Hack was a Florentine bookkeeper of Protestant Swiss origin. Her mother, Maria Luisa Poggesi, a Tuscan Catholic, was a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence and a miniaturist at the Uffizi Gallery. Both parents left their religion to join the Italian Theosophical Society, for which Roberto Hack was secretary for a time under the chairmanship of the countess Gamberini-Cavallini.
An athlete in her youth, Hack played basketball and competed in track and field during the National University Contests, called the under Mussolini's fascist regime, where she won the long jump and the high jump events. She married Aldo De Rosa on 19 February 1944 in the church of San Leonardo in Arcetri; De Rosa had been one of her childhood playmates.
Hack attended the liceo classico "Galileo Galilei" in Florence, but the outbreak of World War II prevented her from taking her exams. In 1945, she received a degree in physics from the University of Florence with a final score of 101/110; her thesis in astrophysics was on Cepheid variables, based on her studies in the Arcetri Observatory, then under the direction of Giorgio Abetti. Hack considered Abetti her model for a scientist, teacher, and scientific research centre administrator.
In Italy, Hack was known for her anti-religious views and her continual criticism of the Catholic Church and of its hierarchy and institutions. She was a vegetarian from childhood and supported animal welfare. She wrote a book explaining this choice entitled Perché sono vegetariana ; she also wrote a book entitled La mia vita in bicicletta.
Hack died on 29 June 2013 at 4:30 am at Cattinara Hospital in Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia. She had been hospitalized for a week for heart problems, from which she had suffered for about two years. She had refused to have heart surgery. Hack's husband, Aldo De Rosa, died on 26 September 2014, due to complications of the Alzheimer disease. They both rest in the cemetery of Sant'Anna in Trieste. Hack left her personal library, containing 18,000 books on astronomy, to the city of Trieste.

Scientific activity

She was full professor of astronomy at the University of Trieste from 1964 to 1 November 1992, when Hack was placed "out of role" for seniority. She has been the first Italian woman to administrate the Trieste Astronomical Observatory from 1964 to 1987, bringing it to international fame.
A member of several important physics and astronomy associations, Margherita Hack was also director of the Astronomy Department at the University of Trieste from 1985 to 1991 and from 1994 to 1997. She was a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. She worked at many American and European observatories and was for long time member of working groups of ESA and NASA. In Italy, with an intensive promotion work, she obtained the growth of activity of the astronomical community with access to several satellites, reaching a notoriety of international level.
File:Margherita Hack.jpg|thumb|left|Hack at the 2011 Festival della Scienza in Genoa
Hack published several original papers in international journals and several books both of popular science and university level. In 1994 she was awarded with the Targa Giuseppe Piazzi for the scientific research, and in 1995 with the Cortina Ulisse Prize for scientific dissemination.
In 1978, Margherita Hack founded the bimonthly magazine L'Astronomia, whose first issue came out in November 1979; later, together with Corrado Lamberti, she directed the magazine of popular science and astronomy culture Le Stelle.

Social and political activity

Hack was also known for her activities outside of science, especially in the social and political fields.
She was an atheist and she did not believe in any religion or form of supernaturalism. Hack also believed that ethics does not derive from religion, but from "principles of conscience" that allow anyone to have a secular view of life, respectful of other people's individuality and freedom.
Hostile to any form of superstition, including pseudosciences, Hack was a scientific guarantor of CICAP since 1989 and an honorary president of the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics. In 2005, she joined Luca Coscioni Association for the freedom of scientific research. She has been a member of the Transnational Radical Party.
Hack stood for Italian regional elections of 2005 in Lombardy in the list of the Party of Italian Communists obtaining 5,364 votes in the province of Milan. After the election, she gave her seat to. She sided again with the Party of Italian Communists in the 2006 Italian general election. She was nominated for several districts of the Chamber of Deputies, but she decided to give the seat up to devote herself to astronomy.
On 22 October 2008, during a student demonstration in Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Hack gave a lecture on astrophysics touching on the experiments carried out at the CERN about the Higgs boson, after a discussion against the law 133/08. On 21 January 2009 she became a candidate of the Anti-capitalist List for the European Elections of June. She wasn't elected because the list didn't reach the 4% threshold. In November 2009, through an open letter on the MicroMega magazine, she criticized the Italian President of the Council, Silvio Berlusconi, on the matter of legal actions in which he was involved in and his alleged attempt to elude them.
During the regional elections of 2010, Hack was running with the Federazione della Sinistra and she was elected in the Rome district with over 7000 votes. During the first Council meeting she resigned leaving the seat to the other list's candidates. In October 2012 she declared her endorsement for Nichi Vendola during the left wing primary elections, whereas during the following ballot she sided for Matteo Renzi against Pierluigi Bersani.
In April 2013, Hack joined the "Emma Bonino committee" together with other eminent Italian figures, such as Renzo Arbore, Toni Garrani, Anna Fendi, Alessandro Pace, Stefano Disegni to promote Emma Bonino's candidacy as Italian President of the Republic.
For more times, Hack was invited by and gave some lectures at the Grand Orient of Italy.

Supporting nuclear research

Regarding the energy issue, Margherita Hack spoke against the construction of nuclear power stations in Italy, but in favour of nuclear research, explaining that Italy was not at that time able to maintain nuclear reactors and that Italy is a scarcely reliable country.

Artistic activity

Despite being far from the music world, Margherita Hack accepted a request from her friend, Roman singer-songwriter Stefano Pais, in 2006 to write the lyrics for the song "Questo è il mondo", with which Pais aimed to participate in the following year's Sanremo Festival. The song was not selected for the final stage of the competition. Hack openly expressed her indifference to the outcome and the festival itself, leading to a live televised argument with Sanremo host and artistic director Pippo Baudo. The song was later recorded by Pais and is available on YouTube in a live performance.
In 2010, Hack appeared in the music video for "" by the band, portraying the role of Alfonsina Strada, a pioneering female cyclist.
Between 2011 and 2012, she collaborated with singer Ginevra Di Marco on the concert-show L'anima della terra vista dalle stelle, where Hack narrated her experiences of the 20th century accompanied by Di Marco's music.

Sports career

In her youth, Margherita Hack demonstrated exceptional athletic talent. After a brief stint in basketball, she shifted to competitive athletics in the early 1940s. In 1941, she won gold in the high jump and long jump at the in Florence. The following year, she earned gold in the high jump and bronze in the long jump at the Littoriali in Como. In 1942, she also secured bronze in the high jump at the Italian National Women's Championships.

National Championships

;1940:
No rank at the Italian National Women's Championships, high jump
;1941:
7th at the Italian National Women's Championships, high jump – 1.40 m
9th at the National Championships, long jump – 4.70 m
;1942:
at the Italian National Women's Championships, high jump – 1.45 m
;1943:
6th at the Italian National Women's Championships, high jump – 1.40 m

Honours

Awards and decorations

Tributes

On 12 June 2021, Google celebrated Hack with Google Doodle on her 99th birthday.
In June 2022, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth, a statue of Margherita Hack was placed in front of the Università Statale di Milano. The bronze statue, titled Sguardo Fisico, is by the artist – a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, where Hack's mother graduated. This is the first statue of a woman scientist to stand on public ground in Italy.

Selected publications

C'è qualcuno là fuori?
Hack! Come io vedo il mondo
Nove vite come i gatti
Vi racconto l'astronomia
Il Mio Infinito
La mia vita in bicicletta
Perché sono vegetariana
Dove nascono le stelle
''Nebulae and Galaxies''