Aina Elvius

Biography

Aina Elvius was born on 26 June 1917 in Södermalm, Stockholm. She attended the girls' school Högre allmänna läroverket för flickor in Norrmalm, also in Stockholm, gaining her school leaving certificate in 1937. This is the same year she began studying at Stockholms högskola (college); in 1945, she finished her master's degree in mathematics, physics, chemistry and astronomy. She spent a year working as a teacher at Saltsjöbaden coeducational school in 1946-47.

In 1948, she began her polarimetric studies of galaxies at Stockholm University using Öhman's Polarography and in 1951 she published her first polarization study of the spiral galaxy M63. She was later invited by John Scotville Hall to work at the Lowell Observatory, where she made a series of observations of the polarization of light from galaxies and from nebulae in the Milky Way. She defended her doctoral thesis at Stockholm University College in 1956. In the same year, she became an associate professor of astronomy at Stockholm University. In 1960, she received a doctoral degree at Uppsala University and then a post at the Swedish Science Research Council. From 1979 to 1981, she worked as a professor at the Department of Astronomy, which makes her the first female astronomy professor in Sweden.