María Teresa Ruiz is a Chilean astronomer. She was the first woman to receive Chile's National Prize for Exact Sciences. She was the first woman to successfully study astronomy at the University of Chile, the first female scientist to receive a PhD in astrophysics at Princeton University, and in 1997 became the first woman to receive her country's National Prize for Exact Sciences.

 

Also, she received a postdoctoral position at Tiestre Observatory, Ruiz worked for two years in UNAM, the Institute of Astronomy in Mexico. As of May 2016, she is a member of the Chilean Academy of Science and a professor at the University of Chile, where she teaches astronomy. She is also a member of the Centro de Astrofísica CATA (CATA Centre for Astrophysics).