Epress.am News from Armenia
More than 100 people gathered in Tehran to celebrate the 90th birth anniversary of Iran’s first female astronomer and physics professor, Alenoush Terian, reports Iran’s Press TV.
The Iranian-Armenian scientist was honored during a ceremony in the Iranian capital city on November 9.
Members of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) and more than 100 Armenians paid tribute to the Iranian scientist.
“She always said she had a daughter named sun and a son named moon,” said lawmaker Hassan Ghafourifard, Terian’s former student at Tehran University.
A statement from the Primate of Armenian Diocese of Tehran Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian marking Terian’s birthday was also read out at the ceremony.
Born in an Armenian family in 1920 in Tehran, Terian graduated in Physics from the University of Tehran in 1947.
She began working in physics laboratories of the same university upon graduation and was elected as the chief of laboratory operations in the same year.
She continued her studies in Sorbonne University, Paris, from where she graduated in atmospheric physics in 1956 and returned to Iran to work as an assistant professor in thermodynamics at the University of Tehran.
Terian got a scholarship for a four-month Solar Physics studies in Germany after which she became Iran’s first female Physics Professor in 1964.
In 1966, Terian became a member of the geophysics committee of Tehran University and was elected as the chief of the solar physics studies three years later.
She was one of the founders of the solar observatory of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Tehran where she also worked until her retirement in 1979.