Gratitude to the University of Chile faculty.

Thank you for decades of research on the economics of education, equity and gender gaps in STEM, and for accepting the call to lead the Universidad de Chile as only its second woman rector.

Thank you for a lifetime spent listening to the calcium signals inside our cells and what they mean for memory and disease, and for opening Chile's highest scientific honors to the women who came after you.

Thank you for the Calan/Tololo supernova survey that helped humanity measure the accelerating universe, and for filling theaters with thousands of Chileans who came just to hear about the stars.

Thank you for deep theorems in nonlinear partial differential equations and Hamiltonian systems, and for caring just as much about how Chilean children learn to reason mathematically.

Thank you for reading Chile through its kitchens, its mothers and its myths, and for giving mestizo culture a scholarly mirror it had never had.

Thank you for a lifetime of studying how societies leave authoritarianism behind, and for helping Chile think its way honestly through transition after transition.

Thank you for fearless cultural journalism through Chile's hardest decades, and for teaching young reporters that ethics is the craft itself, not an accessory to it.

Thank you for bringing cancer immunotherapy from the bench toward Chilean patients, and for serving science both as researcher and as minister without losing the laboratory's honesty.

Thank you for discovering Kelu-1 and opening the study of brown dwarfs, and for showing every girl in Chile that the southern sky belongs to her too.

Thank you for a contralto voice that carried Chilean art song across the world, and for decades of forming singers at the university with patience and love.