Leopoldo Infante Lira
The first Chilean to direct Las Campanas. In 2015 he found the most distant galaxy then known: its light left when the universe was 400 million years old.
In 2015 his team found "Tayna", then the most distant known galaxy. Its light had left it when the universe was about 400 million years old: less than 3% of its current age.
Two years later he became the first Chilean to direct the Las Campanas Observatory, run by the Carnegie Institution, one of the major observatories of the southern hemisphere.
From the UC to Victoria, and back
Master's in Physics
University of Victoria, Canada.
Doctorate in Physics
University of Victoria. That year he joins the Universidad Católica as an assistant professor.
Heads the UC Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Which he co-founded.
Full professor
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Founds the UC Centre for Astro-Engineering
And chairs the Chilean Astronomical Society between 2009 and 2010.
Discovery of "Tayna"
The most distant known galaxy at the time.
Director of the Las Campanas Observatory
Appointed by Carnegie in April; takes up the post on 31 July. First Chilean in the role.
A dwarf planet bears his surname
The International Astronomical Union names (711824) Infante, discovered in 2003 from Maunakea.
He was a visiting professor at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, with stays at the European Southern Observatory, the University of Bonn and the Vatican Observatory. His output adds up to 266 peer-reviewed papers and more than 35,800 citations. He is now director emeritus of Las Campanas.
Looking back in time
His current line of work is galactic protoclusters during the epoch of reionisation, some 800 million years after the Big Bang: the moment when the first stars switched on and made transparent the gas that filled the universe. In the 1990s he had worked on ultracompact galaxies.
It is an unexpected honor to have an astronomical object in the solar system with my family’s last name.
Leopoldo Infante, on the dwarf planet (711824) Infante
The dark sky as a natural resource
The other priority he points to is training specialised human capital before 2030, when the great next-generation telescopes installed in Chile come into operation. On his role with students, he summed it up this way: guide them so they follow their own path, not his.
What the sources do not quite settle
He was named director of the Las Campanas Observatory in April 2017 and took up the post on 31 July.
Official Carnegie Science announcement.
Master's (1985) and doctorate (1990) at the University of Victoria.
That university's institutional profile.
He was born in 1955.
The year appears on Wikidata with no attached reference. The place — Santiago — is supported by the University of Victoria profile. Since the profile needs a year to order the timeline, 1955 is recorded here, with the caveat that it has not been confirmed against a primary source.
The year of his undergraduate degree at the Universidad Católica.
Carnegie confirms he studied physics at the UC, but no source gives the year of the degree.
- Carnegie Science (2017). Comunicado oficial de su nombramiento
View source → - University of Victoria (2025). Presidents' Alumni Award: formación y lugar de nacimiento
View source → - AURA. Perfil con cifras de producción científica
View source →
How to cite
This is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, as long as you give credit.
FísicaEterna. (2026). Leopoldo Infante Lira — biography, FísicaEterna. Retrieved [access date] from https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/leopoldo-infante
@misc{fisicaeterna_leopoldo_infante,
author = {FísicaEterna},
title = {Leopoldo Infante Lira — biography, FísicaEterna},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/leopoldo-infante},
note = {CC BY 4.0}
}