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Maria Zuber built her first telescope at age ten, grinding the glass optics herself. "My mother says that I jumped up and down in my playpen and pointed at photos of the astronauts on television," says Zuber, who, after her fellowship year at Radcliffe, became the first woman to head the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I never picked this field; it picked me."

The first in her family to attend college, Zuber was driven by the heady pleasure of intellectual curiosity. "My high school counselor told me that I wouldn't get a job in astrophysics," she recalls. "I said, 'That's okay. I don't want to work. I just want to learn.' "

When she arrived at Radcliffe, Zuber had just finished working on two space missions that required intense monitoring of data-gathering instruments and swift analysis of new information. "I wanted to think, not just react," she says. In addition to conducting collaborative research with professors in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences during her fellowship year, Zuber made a point of mentoring female graduate students. And, of course, she tucked into the Institute's interdisciplinary smorgasbord.

"I had a whole year to learn from brilliant people," says Zuber. "I was surprised by the different ways that creativity can manifest itself," she adds. "It was enriching to see how people's minds work."

Photo by Webb Chappell

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