The UC Berkeley Astronomy Department invites you to attend The 2026 Annual Distinguished Lecture in Astronomy, featuring Professor Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz!
The event takes place:
Monday, September 14
6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m
105 Stanley Hall, Berdahl Auditorium
Abstract:
Where did the building blocks of life come from? The answer lies in the hearts of distant stars and incredibly powerful explosions such as supernovae, which help spread fundamental elements to galaxies far and wide, where they can spark new life. The talk explores how hundreds of millions of celestial events have forged the elements that make up the Solar System, Earth, and us. Travel deep inside a giant star nearing the end of its life and witness the collision of stellar corpses. From the oxygen we breathe to the iron in our blood, the silicon in Earth’s mantle to the uranium that warms our planet’s core and helps give our planet its protective magnetic field, we owe it all to the stars!
About the Speaker:
Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz was born in Mexico, studied physics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and pursued his PhD at Cambridge University. He was the John Bahcall Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton before joining the faculty at UC Santa Cruz, where he is a professor of astrophysics and astronomy and holds the Vera Rubin Presidential Chair.