Margherita Hack

She was full professor of astronomy at the University of Trieste from 1964 to the 1st of November 1992, when Hack was placed "out of role" for seniority.[12] She has been the first Italian woman to administrate the Trieste Astronomical Observatory from 1964 to 1987,[13] bringing it to international fame.[14]

Member of the most prestigious physics and astronomy associations,[15] 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 (national member in the class of mathematical physics and natural sciences; second category: astronomy, geodesic, geophysics and applications; section A: astronomy and applications).[16] She worked at many American and European observatories and was for long time member of working groups of ESA and NASA.[17] 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.[14]

Hack has 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;[12] later, together with Corrado Lamberti, she directed the magazine of popular science and astronomy culture Le Stelle.[18]

Margherita Hack on a UAAR conference in 2007

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.[19] 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.[19]

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 (UAAR).[20] In 2005, she joined Luca Coscioni Association for the freedom of scientific research. She has been a member of the Transnational Radical Party.[21]

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.[22] After the election, she gave her seat to Bebo Storti. 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 (which previously was the law-decree 112, called "Tremonti decree"). On the 21st of 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.[23]

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.[24] 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 in order to promote Emma Bonino's candidacy as Italian President of the Republic.

Regarding energetic issue, Margherita Hack spoke against the construction of nuclear power stations in Italy, but in favour of the nuclear research, explaining that Italy was not at that time able to maintain nuclear reactors and that Italy is a scarcely reliable country.[25]