Maria reiche biography

German mathematician and guardian of Peru's Nazca Lines petroglyphs. Born on May 15, 1903, in Dresden, Germany; died of cancer on June 8, 1998, in Lima, Peru; graduated from a local university in Dresden, 1928; studied with Long Island University scholar Paul Kosok.

Left Germany for Peru (1932); first visited Nazca lines with mentor Kosok (1941); began scientific work in Nazca desert, living most of the time in a small hut there (1946); awarded Peruvian government's highest honor, the Order of the Sun (1993); became Peruvian citizen (1994).

In 1932, Maria Reiche left her native Germany with a mathematics degree and the ability to speak five languages, to become a tutor in Peru.

While working as a translator in Lima a few years later, Reiche met Paul Kosok, an American scholar who had come to Peru to investigate recently discovered enormous shallow lines etched into the Peruvian desert floor about 250 miles south of Lima.

In 1941, Reiche's life cha