WASHINGTON, March 18, 2025 — AIP is pleased to announce Ana María Cetto as the recipient of the 2025 John Torrence Tate Medal for International Leadership in Physics.
Cetto was recognized for her “outstanding contributions to the promotion of science, and scientific outreach and cooperation worldwide, including transforming open access through Latindex, championing gender equity through the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World and advancing peaceful progress through science including at the International Atomic Energy Agency and in other international fora.”
The Tate Medal, named after the celebrated American physicist John Torrence Tate and established in 1959, is awarded to non-U.S. citizens for leadership, research contributions, and service to the physical sciences community. The award includes a certificate of recognition, bronze medal, and $10,000 prize.
Cetto will be presented the award at the 2025 Physics and Astronomy Congress, which will run Oct. 30–Nov. 1 in Denver, Colorado.
“Ana María Cetto’s lifelong work advocating for the availability and accessibility of science and research in the international community makes her incredibly deserving of this award,” said Michael Moloney, CEO of AIP. “AIP is honored to announce the awarding of this prize to professor Cetto during Women’s History Month, commemorating her work to support women in the physical sciences.”
Cetto currently serves as a professor at the Institute of Physics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She holds a master’s in biophysics from Harvard University and a master’s and a doctorate in physics from UNAM. Cetto is also a fellow of many prestigious societies, including AIP member society the American Physical Society, the Third World Academy of Science, the Mexican Academy of Science, the Mexican Physics Society, and the World Future Council.
As a Spanish-speaking researcher born and raised in Mexico City, Cetto learned early on that there wasn’t the same visibility for papers published in Latin America.
“After organizing an international workshop in Guadalajara on the issue of the lack of visibility and recognition of our scholarly publications, I got the idea of creating an online database for our works,” she said.
Thus, Latindex was born — a noncommercial, open-access resource for scholarly journals published in Ibero American countries. When Cetto began the project, they hosted around 2,400 titles. Now, she says, there are more than 27,000, and she still presides over it. In 2003, Cetto was named Woman of the Year in Mexico for being an ambassador for physics.
Starting in her days as a student, Cetto has always been active in a range of peace movements, including serving as the chair of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization working to reduce global security conflicts and armed threats. She served on the council in 1995 when Pugwash received the Nobel Peace Prize and was elected chair in 1997. In 2003, Cetto was invited to serve as the deputy director general at the International Atomic Energy Agency, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
“Leaving Pugwash and joining the IAEA gave me the opportunity to see the other side of the same coin,” Cetto said. “IAEA was an extremely interesting experience, both from the technical point of view and also from the diplomatic point of view.”
Cetto is also the co-founding member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World. What began as a conference to address the issues women face in the physical and natural sciences has become a global forum to unite women in science across developing countries. Similarly, elected for two terms as Secretary General of the International Science Council, she worked hard to make the organization truly international.
Cetto is currently researching theoretical physics and quantum mechanics at the Institute of Physics at UNAM. While her research is foundational to the scientific community, she said that being recognized for her work outside of her scholarship is highly gratifying.
“The fact that this medal is being given to me for things which I have accomplished in my life that I don’t get paid for — things that I feel responsible to do as a scientist — is very meaningful,” she said.
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