At age 11, José Maza left Parral to study in Santiago. At his new school, he tried to fit in by playing soccer, but he soon discovered that his talent didn't lie on the field. He vowed never to return and found refuge in the library. There, he began to gaze up at the sky.
He enrolled in the engineering program at the University of Chile, and during his junior year, a specialization in astronomy was introduced. A visit to the Cerro Tololo Observatory ultimately sealed his calling.
Years later, Maza was part of the Calán-Tololo project, whose studies of supernovae provided essential tools for the research that would lead to the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe, for which the team was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011.
Today, thousands of Chileans look up at the sky with the same curiosity as that boy who one day traded the soccer field for a library.
Sources: Radio Pauta, Wikipedia.
