Natalia Victorovna Zotov was a physicist and mathematician who combined an academic career with religious life as a nun. She published many papers in theoretical and statistical cosmology.
Zotov completed a PhD in cosmology at the University of Otago in 1974. During that time she worked as an assistant lecturer at the university. She then worked in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research as a mathematician and at the Carter Observatory as an astronomer in 1975 and 1976. She was awarded a senior visiting fellowship at the University of Cambridge and was a visiting scientist at Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona in 1977 and 1978.[2]
Furthering her studies in the United States,Zotov worked in Illinois and Wisconsin,and then at Gannon University in Pennsylvania. While there,she spent two summers at the Vatican Observatory in Rome,the first woman to work there as an astronomer. She joined the engineering faculty at Louisiana Tech in 1990 and,until her retirement in 2009,she was a professor of mathematics there. In addition to teaching,she was actively involved in gravitational wave research at the LIGO Livingston Observatory in Louisiana. There she also mentored graduate and undergraduate students.
Honours and awards
Zotov was given the Lecture Prize from the University of Canterbury Mathematical Society in 1967.[2] Zotov was made a member of scientific research honor society Sigma Xi in 1995.[2]
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