Iran’s First Female Astronomer Passes Away

TEHRAN—Iran’s first female astronomer Alenoush Terian passed away on March 4 at the age of 90. The Iranian-Armenian scientist was honored during a ceremony in Tehran on Nov. 9. Members of the Iranian Parliament and more than 100 Armenians paid tribute to Terian.
“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 Tehran Prelate, Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian, marking Terian’s birthday was also read at the ceremony.
Born in 1920 in Tehran, Terian graduated from the University of Tehran in 1947 with a degree in physics. After graduating, she began working at the university’s physics laboratories and was elected as the chief of laboratory operations the same year.
She continued her studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris, graduating with a degree in atmospheric physics in 1956. She returned to Iran to work as an assistant professor in thermodynamics at the University of Tehran.
Terian got a scholarship to study solar physics for four months 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.