Cristina Cappa de Nicolau
Argentina
1953-2021
Obituary:
Cristina E. Cappa, Argentinian astronomer that worked for more than 35 years at both La Plata National University (UNLP), where she was Associated Professor, and Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomia (IAR), a research Institute from National Research Council (CONICET), passed away on 2 August 2021.
She was born at La Plata in 1953 and earned a PhD. in Astronomy from the Faculty of Astronomy and Geophysics in 1984 with the thesis entitled Interaction of early type stars with the interstellar medium. The topic of this investigation was the prelude of her work throughout the rest of her professional life, and one that would lead her to become an expert on radio-astronomical observations aimed at disclosing the nature of the interaction of early type stars and their surrounding interstellar medium.
Based on 21-cm neutral hydrogen observations, she was the first to detect in 1984 the interstellar bubble associated with the Wolf Rayet star θ Muscae. Based on this result, a new research line was opened at IAR.
Cristina was a generous and devoted teacher, always willing to help and guide her students. Her passion and enthusiasm for research, led many of her students to become astronomers. Besides her investigations, she was a great promoter of the idea that astronomy, and science in general, should be made understandable for the general public. Her contributions to outreach lectures are countless.
She was also Vice-Director of IAR, and was involved in the installation of the Large Latin American Millimeter Array (or LLAMA for short), an ambitious Argentinean-Brazilian joint project whose goal is to install, at 4800m above sea level in the northwestern part of Argentina (Salta province), a 12m dish for millimeter/submillimeter observations. She was, for a while, Scientific Responsible for the Argentinean counterpart of this project.
Those of us who were close to her, as a colleague, teacher, or friend are going to miss her very much. We warmly hug José, her husband, and Cecilia and José, her children.
Cristina´s commitment, guidance and kindness will be missed deeply missed.