Dr. Silvia Torres Castilleja was born in Mexico City in 1940. She studied physics in the School of Science of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and obtained her doctoral degree in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley. She is an Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Astronomy and an Emeritus Researcher of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores.

She is considered to be one of the Mexican scientists with greater international recognition in particular for her contributions involving theoretical and observational studies of interstellar matter. Her work on the so-called HII regions, gaseous clouds surrounding young high-mass stars and nebulae around evolved stars, such as the Sun, and planetary nebulae  is also worthy of mention. Using cutting edge technology, she has conducted her work not only at the National Astronomical Observatory, but at other observatories, some telescopes attached to satellites, such as the International Ultraviolet Explorer and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Her articles have contributed in expanding the knowledge on the transformations of galaxy gas through successive stellar generations.

She has been vice chairman of the International Astronomical Union and director of the Institute of Astronomy of the UNAM. She has also been a member of the board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and of the American Astronomical Society. She belongs to the Mexican Society of Physics, the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the Third World. At present she is coordinating Mexico’s participation in organizing the International Year of Astronomy 2009. She is a member of the Science Advisory Council of the Presidency of the Republic.

Among the many honors and awards she has received, the following stand out: the Guillaume Bude Medal bestowed by the College de France, the Academic Medal if the Mexican Society of Physics, the National University Award in the field of Exact Sciences from the UNAM; the Medal Heberto Castillo from the Institute of Science and Technology of the Federal District, and the National Prize of Science and the Arts.

Since its foundation and until 1998 she was the editor of the Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica. She has published more than 100 original research articles in prestigious international journals and has been cited more than 5,500 times in specialized articles in her field.