Allie Vibert Douglas was born December 15, 1894, in Montreal, Quebec and died July 2, 1988, in Kingston, Ontario. She was an astronomer and the first Canadian woman to become an astrophysicist. Douglas began her education at McGill University, but, with the outbreak of WWI, she moved to England with her brother where she worked in the War Office as a statistician. She returned to Montreal to continue her education at McGill where she was the first person to earn a PhD in astrophysics from a Quebec university. As well, she was the first women in North America to reach this level of achievement. Douglas became the Dean of Women at Queens University. In 1967, she served as an officer of the Order of Canada and, in that same year, the National Council of Jewish Women named Douglas one of ten “Women of the Century.” She died in 1988 and soon after her death, asteroid 3269 was named Vibert Douglas in her honor. In addition, in 2003 a crater on the planet Venus was named after Douglas.
Further information about this remarkable woman can be found at the following websites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibert_Douglas
http://www.queensu.ca/gazette/alumnireview/stories/allie-vibert-douglas
http://www.rickchiarelli.com/trailblazing-women-initiative.html
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/alice-vibert-douglas/