Ewine van Dishoeck
Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory, and served as the President of the International Astronomical Union and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She is one of the pioneers of astrochemistry, and her research is aimed at determination of the structure of cosmic objects using their molecular spectra.
Early life
Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck was born on June 13, 1955, in Leiden, Netherlands. With her father being a professor of ear, nose, and throat medicine, her love of science was inspired at the young age of 12. During this time, her father was invited to spend six months in San Diego, CA. Her first science class ever was through the San Diego Public School system. She fondly remembers that her science teacher, a female and African-American in the 1960s, was forced to overcome many obstacles to reach the position she is at now. Her upbringing inspired Van Dishoeck to gain an interest in science and have the desire to do great things in the world of chemistry. When she went back to the Netherlands, she was motivated to pursue a career in chemistry, with the University of Leiden being the launchpad for her research.Education and career
Ewine van Dishoeck studied chemistry at the University of Leiden. At Leiden, Van Dishoeck found that physics interested her as well. Her interests began shifting toward chemical physics soon after, with quantum chemistry being one of the main focal points of her senior project research. Tragedy struck when the only full professor at Leiden who specialized in quantum chemistry died. PhD programs in Holland require the thesis to be supervised by a full professor. If Van Dishoeck wanted to stay at Leiden for her graduate work, she needed to find another field of study. At that time, Van Dishoeck’s boyfriend and future husband, Tim de Zeeuw, studied astronomy and finished a course on discoveries of interstellar molecules. From de Zeeuw, she learned that the expert of the interstellar medium was Alex Dalgarno at Harvard University. While studying with Dalgarno in 1980, she switched her major to astrochemistry and completed her PhD on the excitation and breaking up of molecules within interstellar gas clouds. She then returned to Cambridge, MA, to receive a position in Harvard’s Society of Fellows to continue her outstanding research on the interstellar medium. She has been the scientific director of the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy since 2007.Research
Van Dishoeck works on interstellar molecules; physical and chemical evolution during star formation and planet formation; submillimeter and mid-infrared astronomy; basic molecular processes; and the radiative transfer of line and continuum radiation. In 2021 she was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to study chemistry and physics in the planet-forming disks around stars other than the Sun.She is the most cited molecular astrophysicist in the world.