Professor emerita Birgit Thilander has died at the age of 92. She was active in research until the very end. Birgit Thilander received her professorship in orthodontics in 1969, and was the first female professor at both the Institute and within dentistry in Sweden.
During her research career Birgit Thilander produced more than 200 original articles. Several of these have since been rewarded with prestigious awards. In her resesearch she was mainly driven by her own curiosity:
– Research is for me like doing a big jigsaw puzzle, where each new result is a new piece that fits into what I already added. I have always been curious about what the next piece of the puzzle may look like, and curiosity is still the force that drives me, Birgit Thilander explained in 2011, in an interview with the Sahlgrenska Academy news, akademiliv.se.
During her work at the Institute, she supervised 19 doctoral students until graduation. Eight of these doctoral students later become professors. During her life Birgit Thilander received doctoral insignia on five occassions during her life. Except her own doctoral conferment in 1961, she was also awarded an honorary doctorate at three universities abroad and in 2011 she was appointed Jubileee Doctor at Karolinska Institutet.
Akademiliv hopes to return with a newly written obituary for Birgit Thilander shortly.
Here you can find a longer interview with Birgit Thilander, in an article from 2011: http://130.241.135.136/2011/11/2714/
I was to saddened to hear that Bibbi has passed away. Her studies influenced my research and me met at several occasions while I was still in Orthodontics in Abo and later in USA. My late husband Ben Moffett was also her admirer and enjoyed meeting her. She was a delightful personality!