User:Oceanchaos/lisitzin

Eugenie Lisitzin (November 13, 1905 - October 28, 1989 ) was a Finnish physical oceanographer active in the mid-20th century. She was the first woman in Finland to earn a PhD in physics (1938) and join the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters (1960).

Early life
Lisitzin was born in Dresden to the 40-year-old mining engineer Gregorius Lisitzin, who was still in Germany after graduating from the Bergakademie Freiberg 13 years earlier, and Eugenie Maria de Ratomska. Her father's scientific activities took the family to Russia (especially Vyborg where he studied and later became an honorary member of the Technical Club), Belgium, Sweden, and eventually back to Finland, where he remained influential in the Käkisalmi area of Karelia and helped build railroads until it became part of Russia.

Education
Like her father, Eugenie began her formal studies in Vyborg, graduating 1926 from the Vyborg Swedish-Speaking Girls' School, then received a bachelor's degree from the University of Helsinki in 1929. Nine years later, she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in physics in Finland in 1938; she received honor's distinctions in other subjects as well.

Career
After graduation, she worked for the Finnish Institute of Marine Research for 40 years, beginning in 1933, and serving as the head of the Sea Level Department from 1955 until her retirement in 1972. She received an honorary professorship in 1962, and was the first woman elected to the Math and Physics division of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters in 1960. Lisitzin's research on sea level variation included over a hundred professional publications, including an important review of global tide data collected during the International Geophysical Year with fellow female oceanographer June Pattullo (Oregon State University), concluding that seasonal variation in Pacific sea level is influenced by air pressure above ~40 degrees latitude but not below. She later generalized and expanded these findings into a monograph that included the rest of the world's oceans. Her studies culminated in the textbook "Sea Level Changes" (1974), which was notable for synthesizing meteorological and seasonal factors with long-term secular trends (even before the effects of global warming were widely appreciated), recalculating the rate of land uplift across Scandinavia, geological evidence of widespread change elsewhere, seiche waves, and discussion of anthropological legends of universal floods. The book received at least 500 citations in peer-reviewed studies, despite being published in English, not one of Lisitzin's native languages but one of nine she spoke fluently.

Later life
She remained active into her seventies, writing a history of the Institute of Marine Research in 1978. She died in 1989 at age 83.