Dilhan Eryurt: Here’s why a Google Doodle is celebrating the Turkish astrophysicist today
Professor Eryurt’s studies were pivotal at a new time of space flights, and illustrated how the sun is not warming, but is actually getting cooler and losing brightness
Reported from inews.co.uk - Yesterday's Google Doodle celebrates the iconic Turkish astrophysicist Dilhan Eryurt.
The illustration shows a cartoon woman looking up at the stars, the origins of which she helped uncover for NASA in the 1960s.
The only female astronomer at the space agency at the time, Dr Eryurt’s impressive career spans continents and perhaps most memorably, she made a significant discovery which contributed to the success of the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission.
Here’s everything you need to know about the award-winning scientist.
Early life
Born in Izmir in west Turkey on November 29, 1926, Dilhan Eryurt’s father was Abidin Ege who was a Minister of Parliament in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for Denizli Province in 1944.
Shortly after her father’s arrival in Izmir, her family moved to Istanbul and then Ankara a few years later, where she completed her primary and secondary education.
She developed a love for mathematics in high school, and went on to study it at university, before astronomy peaked her interest.
Academia
She helped open an Astronomy Department at Ankara University, before receiving her doctorate there in 1953 after spending time at the University of Michigan.
She obtained a two-year scholarship to Canada from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1959 where she worked with eminent space scientist Alastair G. W. Cameron.
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She went back to the USA to work for the Soroptimist Federation of America at Indiana University, and on the identification of Stellar Models at the Goethe Link Observatory, working with Marshall Wrubel.
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A scientific breakthrough
She then went to work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland where she made huge breakthroughs regarding the solar system’s largest star.
Professor Eryurt understood that, contrary to popular wisdom, the brightness of the Sun had decreased during its 4.5 billion years lifespan, meaning it was warmer and brighter in the past.
Her research influenced space flights, and she later received the Apollo Achievement Award for her work in helping to model the solar impact on the lunar environment for Apollo 11’s Moon landing mission.
She went on to work at the California University, where she studied the formation and development of Main Sequence stars, which are a continuous band of stars appearing on lots of stellar colour.
Later life
In 1968, the professor returned to Turkey to set up their first National Astronomy Congress, only to return to NASA the following year.
Dr Eryurt continued her scientific research with NASA until 1973 when she returned to the ODTÜ Physics Department and founded the Astrophysics Branch.
She was awarded the Tübitak Science Award in 1977.
In 1988, she became Chairperson of the Physics Department for six months, and then became the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Letters for five years.
She suffered a heart attack and died in Ankara on September 13, 2012, at the age of 85.
