Mar 7, 2011, 7:33 PM

Mother of Iranian astronomy dies at 90

Mother of Iranian astronomy dies at 90

TEHRAN, March 7 (MNA) -- Physics professor Alenush Terian, who was the first Iranian female astronomer, died at Tehran’s Tohid Nursing Home on Sunday. She was 90 years old.

Her funeral procession began at Tehran’s Saint Mary Church on Monday and her body was then laid to rest at the cemetery for Iranian Christians in Tehran.

Her fellow Christians celebrated her 90th birthday at the Ararat Club in Tehran in last November.

Terian, who is considered the mother of astrology, was one of the main founders of the solar observatory of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Tehran.

“She always said I have a daughter who is the sun and the moon is my son,” Tehran MP Hassan Ghafurifard said during the celebration.

Born in a Christian family in 1920 in Tehran, Terian graduated from the University of Tehran in 1947. She began her career in the physics laboratories at the same university and was elected chief of laboratory operations in the same year.

She graduated in 1956 in atmospheric physics from Sorbonne University. She returned to Iran where she became an assistant professor in thermodynamics physics at the University of Tehran.

She studied at the solar physics observatory for 4 months through a scholarship from the German government and finally became the first female professor of physics in Iran in 1964.

In 1966, she became a member of the geophysics committee of the University Tehran. In 1969, she was finally elected as the chief of the solar physics studies at the university. She began working in the solar observatory of which she was one of the founders. Terian retired in 1979.

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MNA

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