Birth of Natalia Melikian (May 20, 1906)

Natalia Melikian was a pioneering female scientist in Armenia. Her actual name was Natalia Ter Meliksetian, and she was born on May 20, 1906, in the Armenian village of Murshudali in the district of Surmalu. She studied at the primary school of Igdir for two years. In 1918, the Melikian family survived the Armenian Genocide and found refuge in Yerevan.  

In 1926, Natalia Melikian graduated from the Miasnikian High School in Yerevan and worked for two years as a teacher in the Hrazdan region. In 1928–1931, she studied in the Department of Biology of Yerevan State University. In 1931, she married Barsegh Muradian, and they had two children. After graduation, she was admitted to the Ph.D. program of the Plant Anatomy and Physiology Department of Moscow State University, where she conducted her research in 1933.  

She returned to Yerevan in 1934 and began working in the newly established Plant Anatomy and Physiology Department of Yerevan State University, first as a teaching assistant and later as head of the laboratory. In 1939, she defended her first Ph.D. thesis on a survey of linseed oil in Armenia and received the title of associate professor in 1940. During those years, in collaboration with biologist Alexander Araratian, she studied oil-producing wild plants she studied oil-producing wild plants, with the goal of implementing their mass production. The Second World War, however, cut short such projects. Her husband was sent to the front and died in May 1942.  

Melikian studied the accumulation of lignin in plant stalks and its anatomical features. The results were summed up in her monograph published in 1959. She defended her second doctoral dissertation in biology in 1964 and was awarded the academic title of professor in 1966. She headed the Department of Plant Anatomy and Physiology of Yerevan State University in 1962-1977 and served as professor and adviser in the same department in 1977–1985. 

Melikyan was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor (1953) and other government medals and diplomas. She was also awarded the title of Scientist Emeritus of Armenia in 1967. 

After a long and prolific career, Natalia Melikian passed away on July 25, 1989, in Yerevan.