Aiden Akkaya

Turkish female engineer who pioneered radio astronomy in the Middle East

Aiden Akkaya (1915-1985) was a trailblazing Turkish scientist who built the region's first radio telescope array despite post-war economic challenges. Born in Izmir to a family of modest means, she earned a physics degree from Istanbul University in 1938 - one of only 12 female graduates that year. Her groundbreaking work began in 1953 when she secured funding from the TUBITAK to construct a 20-meter radio telescope in Tuz Golu, Turkey's salt lake region. This project, completed in 1962, enabled the first Middle Eastern observations of interstellar molecules.

Akkaya's 1968 discovery of radio wave patterns in the Milky Way's center challenged prevailing theories about galactic structure. Her 1972 textbook Radio Astronomy in the Eastern Hemisphere became a standard reference for developing countries. Despite opposition from male-dominated academic circles, she trained 27 female astronomers through her TUBITAK fellowship program.

Today, the Aiden Akkaya Observatory in Antalya hosts an annual conference on space science education. Her legacy is preserved in the NASA database of early radio astronomy pioneers. The European Southern Observatory recently named a comet after her - C/2021 Aiden.