France Cordova < Back to Writers
France Anne Córdova is the 11th president of Purdue University. In 2002, she became the first Hispanic woman to lead a University of California campus, UC Riverside. She had served earlier as chief scientist at NASA before heading to UC Santa Barbara in 1996, where she was vice-chancellor for research. She also has held positions at Pennsylvania State University and Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was the youngest person and the first woman to hold the position of NASA chief scientist. Before becoming a scientist, she was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and conducted anthropology field work in Mexico.
Córdova graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English from Stanford. She earned a Ph.D. in physics from the Cal Tech in 1979.