Inge Lehmann died on February 21, 1993, in Copenhagen at the age of 104, having lived long enough to see her inner-core theory become established science.
Inge Lehmann died on February 21, 1993, in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the remarkable age of 104. She lived an extraordinarily long life that allowed her to witness the full vindication and widespread acceptance of her 1936 hypothesis regarding Earth's solid inner core, a theory that had once been met with considerable skepticism from the international seismological community.
By the time of her death, Lehmann was widely recognized as one of the most significant geophysicists of the twentieth century. She had received numerous prestigious honors during her later decades, including the William Bowie Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 1971 (the first woman to receive this honor), the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and honorary doctorates from several universities. In 1997, a few years after her death, the American Geophysical Union established the Inge Lehmann Medal, awarded annually to scientists for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure, composition, and dynamics of Earth's mantle and core.
Her death marked the close of a career that had spanned more than 60 years, during which she overcame significant institutional and cultural barriers as a woman in the physical sciences, ultimately leaving behind a permanent legacy in our scientific understanding of the planet's deep interior.