Astronomy and literature: ties between both disciplines in the Chilean press (19^th and 20^th centuries)

During the process of making the Chilean astronomy official, there is a period (1880-1920) in which the dissemination of scientific knowledge was intensified between experts and laypeople, especially in the press. This research analyses the dialogue that took place between many Chilean researchers and laypeople (especially writers) regarding certain scientific phenomena (mostly astronomical) during those decades. We will go in depth on the mixing of the scientific and literary speeches in these magazines. We will mainly focus on two topics. On the one hand, the astronomer’s efforts to inform and explain the information based on facts, while the writers paid attention to myths that questioned and ruined the work of the experts. On the other hand, the existing link between the scientific and literary speech in the writing style of the female scientific disseminators of the period.

Researching biography

Verónica Ramírez Errázuriz is Literature professor of the University of Chile. She is currently working as a professor and researcher in the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the University Adolfo Ibáñez. She is developing the project Fondecyt Post-doctoral N°3180131 “Literatura y astronomía en Chile: Diálogos y discusión en el espacio público (1880-1930)”. She has focused her research on the ties between the literary and scientific speeches that are present in the Chilean press during the 19^th century and early 20^th century. She has also paid attention to the relationship between the experts and the laypeople of science and the role of women in this context. Among her publications, we can highlight the articles “Expertos y profanos: Circulación del saber astronómico en revistas culturales chilenas (1900-1920)” (2009), “Retórica científica de Andrés Bello: Hacia una ‘nacionalización’ de la ciencia en su Cosmografía de 1848” (2018), “Andrés Bello y la difusión de la astronomía: educación y retórica científica” (2017) and “Ciencia y mujer: aproximación a un estudio del rol de las primeras divulgadoras de la ciencia en Chile” (2016). She is also author of the books “Antología crítica de mujeres en la prensa chilena del siglo XIX” (2017) and “La Mujer (1877): primer periódico de mujeres en Chile” (2018).