Death of Grigor Gurzadyan (February 22, 2014)

Astrophysics in Armenia became linked to the world-famous name of Victor Hambardzumian. One of his students would become an important name in cosmic astronomy.

Grigor Gurzadyan was born on October 15, 1922, in Baghdad (Iraq), the child of survivors from the Armenian Genocide. He emigrated to Soviet Armenia with his family when he was just a child. His brother Sargis (1929-2015), born in Yerevan, would coauthor the project of embellishment of Tamanian Street (the area known as Cascade).

Grigor Gurzadyan entered the Polytechnic Institute of Yerevan (now Yerevan State University of Engineering) and graduated in 1944 from the faculties of hydrotechnics and construction. Afterwards, he made a big shift in his career and entered the field of astronomy. He was one of the founding members of the observatory of Biurakan, created in 1946 by Hambardzumian. Under his direction, Gurzadyan defended his doctoral thesis at the State University of Moscow in 1948, at the age of twenty-six, with the subject “The Radiation Equilibrium of Interstellar Gas Material.” He became a professor at Yerevan State University from 1948-1978 and head of the section of Physics of Stars and Nebulae of the observatory from 1950-1966.

He defended his second doctorate in 1955 at the State University of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In the same year, he married Marianna Kalantar, a professor of Russian and daughter of Ashkharbek Kalantar, one of the founders of Armenian archaeology and victim of the Stalin purges. Their children Vahagn and Gagik would also become well-known physicists.

Gurzadyan became a well-known name in Soviet science. He published ten voluminous monographs about issues of astrophysics and more than 200 scholarly articles in Russian and English. He studied the physics and dynamics of nebulae and predicted the role of magnetic fields in nebulae from the 1960s, formulating a theory of star explosions based on the non-thermal phenomena going in them. He headed the observations of ultraviolet and X-rays in the sun and the stars with the launching of orbital telescopes in the 1960s. In 1965 he was elected corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, From 1967-1973 he was the head of the branch of cosmic studies at the observatory of Biurakan.

Gurzadyan’s most important achievement in the design of orbital telescopes was the series “Orion,” which contributed to important scientific results. The telescopes “Orion-1” and “Orion-2” were launched in 1971 and 1973 by the spatial station Salyut-1 and the Soyuz-13 spacecraft. From 1973-1978 he directed the laboratory of astronomy at Garni, where more than 40 Soviet astronauts had their pre-flight training. He went back to Biurakan in 1978 as head of the laboratory of exo-atmospheric astronomy until 1992 and in 1979 he headed the chair of construction of spatial devices at his alma mater, the Polytechnic Institute. From 1992-2004 he was director of the Institute of Astronomy in Garni.

Besides his many scientific achievements, Gurzadyan was also a much-sought essayist from the 1980s. He published many reflections on philosophical and current issues in the press, which were collected in a dozen of books.

An emeritus worker of science since 1975, he was elected full member of the Academy of Sciences in 1986. He passed away on February 22, 2014, in Yerevan, at the age of ninety-two.

Birth of Alenoush Terian (November 9, 1920)

Alenoush Terian, known as the “mother of contemporary astronomy in Iran,” broke the glass ceiling many decades before the term “glass ceiling” was ever used in English.
She was born on November 9, 1920, in Tehran. Her mother had studied in Switzerland and was a French teacher, while her father, native of Nor Jugha, the Armenian suburb near Ispahan, was a writer and became the director of the Sepah Bank for the last twenty years of his life.

Alenoush Terian graduated in 1947 from the Faculty of Science of the University of Tehran and went to work in the physics laboratory of her alma mater. A year later, she was name head of operations of the laboratory.

She tried to convince her professor, Mahmoud Hesabi, to help her get a scholarship to pursue studies in France. However, she was rejected because she was a woman. This did not deter her from going to Paris with her father’s financial support. She studied at the Faculty of Atmospheric Physics of the Sorbonne and obtained a master’s degree in 1956. She was offered a teaching job there, but she rejected it with the aim of bringing her services to Iran. She returned and became an assistant professor of Thermodynamics at the Faculty of Physics in Tehran University.

The situation had changed by 1959, when Western Germany offered a scholarship to Tehran University for studies in the observatory of solar physics for four months. Alenoush Terian was selected for the scholarship and went to Germany in March 1961. After finishing her stint, she returned to Iran. In May 1964 she received the grade of full professor, and became the first female professor of Physics in Iran.

In 1966 she became a member of the Geophysics Committee of Tehran University. Three years later, she was named chairman of the study group of solar physics at the Geophysics Institute of the university and went to work at the solar observatory, which she had helped found. She retired in 1979.

She did not marry, but devoted her entire life to her students. As one former student stated, “She always said that she had a daughter called moon and a son called sun.”
The Iranian TV made a documentary on her life, “Towards the Sun,” in 2003. She was decorated in 2006 by Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.


Alenoush Terian passed away on March 4, 2011, after spending the last years of her life at a nursing home. In her will, she left her home to the Armenian community of Nor Jugha and to those students who do not have a proper living place.