Astronomy and astrophysics professor Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz delivered a keynote lecture on the origin of the elements as part of a series presented by Mexico's National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies. The council chose Ramirez-Ruiz as the final speaker in the series, which leads up to the inauguration of Mexico's new president on October 1, in honor of his distinguished career and accomplishments that followed his public education and training in Mexico.
His September 5 lecture, “On the galactic bestiary and the origin of the elements,” was live streamed and can be found on the council's YouTube channel. He mainly spoke about how extraordinary astrophysical events formed all the oxygen and heavy metals in the universe—and led to life on Earth.
“If our atoms could talk, they would tell us about the entire cosmic history of the world,” Ramirez-Ruiz said at one point during his lecture. "We have more atoms in our body than stars in the universe or grains of sand on the surface of the Earth.”
He also explained how oxygen is linked to the life and death of massive stars, and how the hydrogen in every human body was created in the first three minutes after the Big Bang—over 13 billion years ago. Ramirez-Ruiz uses complex computer simulations to better understand the violent universe, with an emphasis on stellar explosions, transient astrophysics, gravitational wave sources, and accretion phenomena.
Ramirez-Ruiz earned an undergraduate degree in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Cambridge. He joined the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 2007 and co-directs the university's Center for Reimagining Leadership.
