8 June 2015

Welcome Birgitta Nordström

Birgitta Nordström named Associate Professor Emeritus at DARK after many years of research.

Birgitta Nordström

Birgitta Nordström

Birgitta Nordström was born in Sweden and studied physics and astronomy at Stockholm University until she was awarded her PhD in 1970. After postdoc positions in Switzerland and Canada, she came to the Niels Bohr Institute in 1972, where she has worked since then as a scientist and in the administration. Her Danish affiliation has been interrupted by several guest professorships in the USA (Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge) and in Europe (Lund in Sweden, Paris in France, Kiel in Germany and Vienna in Austria).

Birgitta’s research has been centered around the chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies, using the Milky Way as a prototype. Her most-cited paper is the Geneva-Copenhagen Survey of the Solar Neighbourhood (Nordström et al. A&A, 2004), which revealed that the structure of the Milky Way disk is much more complex than previously believed. Other large research projects focus on studying probable remnants of minor dwarfs galaxy mergers in the disk (Zenoviene et al. 2015), and on the oldest and most metal poor stars in the Milky Way halo (Cayrel et al. 2004, Bonifacio et al. 2009) and the formation of the chemical elements in the early Universe (Hansen et al. 2015).

Birgitta has also devoted part of her career to work in international organisations such as the European Southern Observatory, the European Space Agency, the International Astronomical Union, and the Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. She is president of the IAU Commission on the Milky Way (now Local Universe), Co-chair of the ESA SARP for selection of future space missions, and member and ex-Chair of the Board of Directors of A&A.