Women Physicists in Armenia

Abstract

The number of women physicists doing research in Armenia is far less than the number of men, because women put their family and children ahead of their careers. Only a small number of women physicists who try to combine family life and career are successful. Armenia is a small country with few research positions; in spite of this there are several women physicists in Armenia. They are working very well in various areas of physics such as theoretical physics, nuclear physics, elementary particle physics, biophysics, and solid-state physics. Due to hard and fruitful work, some women physicists occupy high positions; for example, A. Danagulyan is the Chair of Nuclear Physics of Yerevan State University. In the three years since the First IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics, female scientists of Armenia have worked very effectively. Four defended their PhD theses (Candidate) and one defended her Doctorate thesis during this period. Many papers of female scientists were presented at international conferences and printed in refereed journals. The women scientists at Yerevan State University (Dr. Prof. A. Danagulyan, Dr. A. Balabekyan, PhD student J. Drnoyan, and young researcher G. Hovhannisyan) have participated in six international conferences devoted to the problems of nuclear physics: International Seminar on Heavy Ion Physics. Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, 2002 25th International Colloquium on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics, Cocoyoc, Mexico 2004 52nd, 53rd, and 54th International Conference on Nuclear Spectroscopy and Nuclear Structure, Moscow 2002, St. Petersburg 2003, and Belgorod 2004 VI Conference of Young Scientists of JINR, Dubna 2002 The main results are presented in 11 scientific papers published in refereed journals such as Nuclear Physics and Physics of Atomic Nuclei. Along with their research activities, these women scientists also have wide teaching experience. They are lecturers in nuclear physics, nuclear reactions, and elementary particle physics. Gohar Haroutunyan, the Doctor of Science at the Chair of Theoretical Physics of Yerevan State University, investigates the theory of gravitation and its astrophysical application. Six of her papers were published from 2002 to 2005. She teaches theoretical mechanics, statistical physics, and Green’s functions. Dr. Prof. Yeva Dalyan is a specialist in macromolecular physics, the physics of nucleic acids, and structural biology, and works in molecular pharmacology as well. Her papers are published in Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, Experimental and Molecular Medicine, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, and Biophysics. Dr. Prof. Dalyan reported the results of her work at the international conference “URM-2004” in Yerevan in 2004 and at the “International Symposium on Hydration and Thermodynamics of Molecular Recognition” in Armenia in 2005. She teaches courses in molecular physics, introduction to biophysics, and the physics of proteins and nucleic acids. Two female scientists (Dr. A. Djotyan and Sh. Gasparyan) participated in the International Women’s Conference on BIEN-Technology in Daejeon, Korea, in 2003 and presented two scientific reports. The papers are included in the proceedings of the conference in a special issue of the journal Key Engineering Materials. Dr. I.G. Aznauryan (Yerevan Institute of Physics) works in the field of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), which is the fundamental theory accepted now for the description of strong interactions of elementary particles. Dr. Aznauryan works in close cooperation with experimental physicists at Jefferson Lab in the United States. Her investigation of experimental data obtained at Jefferson Lab led to the determination that up to a momentum transfer of 5 GeV, there is no indication of an approaching perturbative region of QCD. The results of her work were published in Physical Review C67 and C68 (2003) and C71 (2005).