Mercedes Richards

Mercedes Tharam Richards (Kingston, 14 May 1955 – Hershey, 3 February 2016), née Davis, was a Jamaican astronomy and astrophysics professor. Her investigation focused on computational astrophysics, stellar astrophysics and exoplanets and brown dwarfs, and the physical dynamics of interacting binary stars systems.

She worked as president of Commission 42 of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which deals with Close Binary Stars, was a member of the Board of Advisers of the Caribbean Institute of Astronomy and a councilor of the American Astronomical Society.

She attended Providence Primary School and graduated in 1966. However, she visited some universities during that period, among them, the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 2013. She also participated in programs of math and science enrichment for high-school students in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Vermont, Virginia and Toronto.

Richards served as an officer in some astronomical organizations, for example, as president of Commission 42 of the IAU, member of the Board of Advisers of the Caribbean Institute of Astronomy or councilor of the American Astronomical Society. which allowed her to research interacting binary stars at the Astronomical Institute of Slovakia in that same year.

In 2012, she was elected again as an Honorary Member of the Physics Honor Society, Sigma Pi Sigma in the Quadrennial Congress, Orlando.

In 2013 she was awarded the American Physical Society Woman Physicist of the Month Award.