Luis F. Rodríguez

As a radio astronomer, I have dedicated most of my research effort to understanding the phenomenon of star formation. In the last three decades we have seen major advances in our understanding of how the stars assemble from much larger, diffuse structures called interstellar clouds. From a simple picture in which a piece of these clouds contracted gravitationally to form a new star, we have evolved to a much richer scenario, in which the growing star does gain gas from the surrounding space, but ejects a fraction of this gas back to the interstellar medium. This ejected gas gives rise to phenomena such as the Herbig-Haro objects and the molecular outflows that can be studied in the vicinity of the forming star. These advances were obtained by a large international community, but the Mexican group of which I form part did play an important role both observationally and theoretically. We are now trying to understand what happens around these forming stars, where disks of gas and cosmic dust are present and should be in their way of transforming into plane.