An internationally recognized astrophysicist who is chancellor of University of California, Riverside, was chosen today (7 May) as the 11th president of Purdue University, according to the Purdue News Bureau.
The Purdue Board of Trustees, meeting on the Loeb Playhouse stage on campus, voted unanimously to hire France A. Córdova (right)and then brought her on stage to the music of "Hail Purdue."
According to MyHero.com, Córdova was born in Paris. Expecting a boy whom they planned to name Frederick III, France’s mother sewed little Fs on all the baby’s clothes. Named Francoise, Córdova later shortened her name to France.
The daughter of a Mexican father who attended West Point and worked in the U.S. State Department and a fifth generation Irish-American mother, France was the eldest of 12 children. She helped take care of her younger siblings from an early age and her sense of responsibility stayed with her for the rest of her life.
Córdova received her bachelor’s degree cum laude in English from Stanford University. She enjoyed Existentialist writers like Camus and Sartre. as well as Joyce and Eliot. During her junior year, she worked on an archaeological dig near a Zapotec Indian pueblo in Oaxaca, Mexico. Delving deeply into her Mexican heritage, she wrote a short novel and compiled recipes into a Mexican cookbook
Córdova, 59, has served at Riverside since 2002, coming from the University of California at Santa Barbara where she had been vice chancellor for research and a professor of physics for six years. Before that, she was the youngest person to hold the position of NASA chief scientist, working on projects that included the Hubble Space Telescope
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