Copenhagen University
Which school did Inge Lehmann go to from 1909 to 1910?
Inge Lehmann Inge Lehmann ( 13 May 1888 – 21 February 1993 ) was a Danish seismologist and geophysicist . In 1936 , she discovered that the Earth has a solid inner core inside a molten outer core . Before that , seismologists believed Earths core to be a single molten sphere , being unable , however , to explain careful measurements of seismic waves from earthquakes , which were inconsistent with this idea . Lehmann analysed the seismic wave measurements and concluded that Earth must have a solid inner core and a molten outer core to produce seismic waves that matched the measurements . Other seismologists tested and then accepted Lehmanns explanation . Lehmann was also one of the longest-lived scientists , having lived for over 104 years . Early life and education . Inge Lehmann was born and grew up in Østerbro , a part of Copenhagen . She was very shy as a child , a behavior that continued throughout her life . Her mother , Ida Sophie Tørsleff , was a housewife ; her father was experimental psychologist Alfred Georg Ludvik Lehmann ( 1858–1921 ) . She received her school education at Fællesskolen , a pedagogically progressive high school that treated girls and boys equally , enrolling them in the same curriculum and extracurricular activities . This school was led by Hanna Adler , Niels Bohrs aunt . According to Lehmann , her father and Adler were the most significant influences on her intellectual development . At age 18 , she achieved a first rank mark in the entrance exam for Copenhagen University . In 1907 , she started her studies in mathematics , chemistry and physics at the University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge . These studies were interrupted by poor health . She continued her studies of mathematics in Cambridge from 1910 to 1911 at Newnham College . In 1911 , she returned from Cambridge feeling exhausted from the work and put her studies aside for a while . She developed good computational skills in an actuary office she worked in for a few years until she resumed studies at Copenhagen University in 1918 . She completed the candidata magisterii degree in physical science and mathematics in two years , graduating in 1920 . When she returned to Denmark in 1923 , she accepted a position at Copenhagen University as an assistant to J.F . Steffensen , the professor of actuarial science . Lehmann had a younger sister , Harriet , who became a movie writer and who had family and children in contrast to Lehmann , who lived by herself all her adult life . Career . In 1925 Lehmanns seismology career began as she became an assistant to the geodesist Niels Erik Nørlund . She was paired with three other assistants who had never so much as seen a seismograph before . She began the task of setting up seismological observatories in Denmark and Greenland . In the meantime , she studied seismology on her own . She went abroad for three months to study seismology with leading experts in the field such as Beno Gutenberg , who had determined the distance to the core-mantle boundary within 15 km of the presently accepted value . Based on her studies in seismology , in 1928 she earned the magister scientiarum degree ( equivalent to an MA ) in geodesy and accepted a position as state geodesist and head of the department of seismology at the Geodetical Institute of Denmark led by Nørlund . Lehmann looked into improving the co-ordination and analysis of measurements from Europes seismographic observatories , as well as many other scientific endeavours . These improvements lay at the heart of her later discoveries . In a paper titled P&apos ; ( 1936 ) , Lehmann was the first to interpret P wave arrivals—which inexplicably appeared in the P wave shadow of the Earths core—as reflections from an inner core , for example from the strong 1929 Murchison earthquake . Other leading seismologists of the time , such as Beno Gutenberg , Charles Richter , and Harold Jeffreys , adopted this interpretation within two or three years , but it took until 1971 for the interpretation to be shown correct by computer calculations . Lehmann was significantly hampered in her work and maintaining international contacts during the German occupation of Denmark in World War II . She served as the Chair of the Danish Geophysical Society in 1940 and 1944 respectively . In 1952 , Lehmann was considered for a professorship in geophysics at Copenhagen University , but was not appointed . In 1953 , she retired from her position at the Geodetic Institute . She moved to the US for several years and collaborated with Maurice Ewing and Frank Press on investigations of Earths crust and upper mantle . During this work , she discovered another seismic discontinuity , which are a step-change increase in the speeds of seismic waves at depths between 190 and 250 km . This discontinuity was named after her , being coined as the Lehmann discontinuity . Francis Birch noted that the Lehmann discontinuity was discovered through exacting scrutiny of seismic records by a master of a black art for which no amount of computerization is likely to be a complete substitute . Awards and honours . Lehmann received many honours for her outstanding scientific achievements , among them the Gordon Wood Award ( 1960 ) , the Emil Wiechert Medal ( 1964 ) , the Gold Medal of the Danish Royal Society of Science and Letters ( 1965 ) , the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat ( 1938 and 1967 ) , her election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 , the William Bowie Medal ( 1971 , as the first woman ) , and the Medal of the Seismological Society of America in 1977 . She was awarded honorary doctorates from Columbia University in 1964 and from the University of Copenhagen in 1968 , as well as numerous honorific memberships . The asteroid 5632 Ingelehmann was named in her honour and in 2015 ( which was the 100th anniversary of womens suffrage in Denmark ) Lehmann got , in recognition of her great struggle against the male-dominated research community that existed in Denmark in the mid-20th century , a new beetle species named after her : Globicornis ( Hadrotoma ) ingelehmannae sp . n. , Jiří Háva & Anders Leth Damgaard , 2015 . Because of her contribution to geological science , in 1997 , the American Geophysical Union established the annual Inge Lehmann Medal to honour outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure , composition , and dynamics of the Earths mantle and core . On the 127th anniversary of her birth , Google dedicated its worldwide Google Doodle to her . A new memorial dedicated to Lehmann was installed on Frue Plads in Copenhagen in 2017 . The monument is designed by Elisabeth Toubro .