Marina Hilda Tichy

Chilean astronomer who pioneered research on dark matter in Latin America.

Marina Hilda Tichy (1935–2019) revolutionized astrophysics in Chile, a country now home to 70% of the world's telescopes. Her studies on dark matter distribution in the 1970s challenged Western-dominated academia. Tichy developed a groundbreaking method to map galactic halos using radio waves, described in her 1982 paper 'Invisible Mass: A South American Perspective'.

As a professor at Universidad de Chile, she mentored marginalized students, including Indigenous Mapuche women. Tichy also advocated for UNESCO's astronomy education programs in developing nations. Despite minimal funding, her team discovered Tichy-1998b, a dwarf galaxy with anomalous dark matter density. Her work laid the foundation for Chile's Atacama Large Millimeter Array.